


The shelter of your arms

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Catelyn does not approve (when does she ever), Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family Drama, First Time, Forbidden Love, Half-Sibling Incest, Identity Reveal, In which Jon goes to King's Landing instead of the Wall, Intimacy, King Stannis, Oberyn Martell Lives, POV Alternating, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Pseudo-Incest, Robb Lives, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, The Battle of the Blackwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-09-17 13:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16975053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: It is Joffrey's chosen punishment for the Starks' treason, his grandest jape, to make brother and sister wed before the court.To spare themselves from the king's wrath, Jon and Sansa pretend to consummate their marriage, but lies have a way of uncovering hidden truths, and when Stannis takes the throne and they are returned North to their family, they must reckon with the consequences of what they have done...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty sure this AU might have been written before for Jon/Sansa, but here's my version.
> 
> This is a forced marriage fic with a pseudo-incestuous pairing and a slow-build romance, and Jon and Sansa have been aged up by a few years from canon.

 

 

"Do you know what they have said about me, bastard," Joffrey sneers, his eyes shining and mad, "the lies your father spun before I had his head cut off?"

He descends from the throne as Jon glowers up at him, forced to a kneel by the jab of a gold cloak's foot in his back.

It is far from the first time Jon has been here, kneeling before the throne and the boy who calls himself the king. In the moons since his father was murdered, Joffrey has sought to punish Jon in many ways, to make an example of him. He has been given stewards duties - before Joffrey decided he was too clumsy and should be beaten for smashing a cup on the floor - was ordered to muck out the stables - before it was decided that even that was too good a job for the bastard son of a traitor, that he did not deserve to be allowed to touch the beasts that Joffrey might ride - and many a time has he been brought into the training yard and given a wooden sword only to fight against a knight who carries live steel, leaving the training yard broken and bloodied, sometimes dragged away and left in a heap to recover.

But Jon will gladly bear any and all such punishments, will be the whipping boy, so that his sister Sansa will not be harmed, so that Arya, if she is ever discovered, will not be hurt.

"Well?" Joffrey asks, raising an eyebrow, waving a hand at another gold cloak who hits Jon across the face with one mailed fist, splitting his lip.

"Answer him," the knight orders - and all Jon's playacting of brave knights with his brothers when they were children has curdled in his chest since he arrived at King's Landing with his father and sisters and saw the corruption of these _chivalrous_ men with his own eyes.

"Aye," Jon says.

Joffrey puts a thoughtful finger to his own chin. "It seems to me that treason of the kind your father committed deserves further punishment, for has your brother not taken arms against the crown, is he not now mustering an army against us? It's in your blood, bastard, treason and dishonour."

If Jon was the only member of his family here in King's Landing, he would charge at Joffrey, he would kill him for what he said about his father, and die for it, but he cannot. Arya may still be found in the city or in the Crownlands and Sansa—

"Lady Sansa!" Joffrey calls out, interrupting Jon's thoughts and turning his bones to ice, making his heart kick in his chest. "Come forward, please," the king says, with an oily smile and an excited trembling in his limbs, as the court watches and waits. It is only a week since her betrothal with the king was broken in front of the very same crowd, since the arrival of the Tyrells and their pretty, scheming daughter.

If Joffrey hurts his sister, if one of his gold cloaks puts a hand to her—

"Your Grace," Sansa says, her voice high and light with only the barest tremor to show her fear.

Sansa has been ever the lady these past moons and where Jon might have once mocked her for it - for her courtesies, her platitudes and perfect manners - he has seen now how they are her own kind of armour or even her own rebellion, how they shine a poor light on Joffrey and his ilk.

"I am sorry to hear that it is not only the men in your family who are traitors, that your _mother_ herself takes a place on her brother's war council," Joffrey scoffs and the court titters with laughter at the thought of it, a woman making plans for war. "Are you a traitor, Lady Sansa?" he asks and bends close to her as Jon grits his teeth, as he sees Sansa clutch her fists in her skirts, her curtain of hair, loose now like she used to wear it at home in the North, shivering.

"No, Your Grace."

"Pretty words, but that's all they are, for I'm afraid that it's in your blood. You, and your brother." Joffrey pauses, glancing up at the court as his smile grows wider. "They call your family wolves, don't they, like the pets you own. And where is your pet, bastard? I can't wait until someone brings me his pelt, I shall make a cloak from it."

Ghost is somewhere out there, let loose by Jon in the aftermath of his father's execution, while Lady lies dead because of the loathsome worm of a king who stands before them.

"They say that wolves in a pack take their brothers and sisters for mates, don't they," Joffrey continues, "and so I think it only right that we let you be the animals you are at heart. You shall marry each other, brother and sister. What say you to that, Lady Sansa?" Joffrey asks as Jon swears and tries to get to his feet, fighting against the gold cloaks holding him down.

Sansa is mute beside him, her face pale when he catches a glimpse of her.

"I know no lady wishes to marry a bastard with a bastard's lusts," Joffrey continues, "but this is your father's doing, your brother's, you can blame them. Well, aren't you going to thank me for finding you a husband? I could have you sent to the silent sisters, you know, I could have you whipped for your treason."

"Thank you, Your Grace," Sansa says, sweeping into a low curtsey.

"And you, Lord _Snow_ ," Joffrey says, coming toe to toe with Jon, so close Jon can see the spittle on his lips. "Aren't you going to thank me for finding you a bride, and a noble one at that?"

A punch to his stomach and a pleading look from his sister has him spitting out a hollow _thank you_ as he pictures his hands tearing into Joffrey's limbs, plunging a sword into his belly as the king chokes on his own blood.

"Excellent," Joffrey says, with a clap of his hands, climbing to his throne once more. "Oh, and you northern savages wed in the godswood, don't you. Far be it for me to attempt to civilise you, you shall marry amongst the trees here, two days hence, and then we shall have a feast to celebrate, and a bedding." He laughs and the court laughs with him, thrilled to have a new spectacle, delighted to watch the misfortunes of others so that they might spare themselves from Joffrey's deranged tyranny.

 

"He would not have done this if his grandfather was here," Sansa says to Jon as they are swept out of the throne room. They are to have new wedding clothes made, they have been told, for Joffrey is not so craven, he told the court, as to let them wed in the northern rags they wear now. "He would have stopped him."

"Sansa—" Jon says, utterly incapable of finding words that might make this better.

"At least I will not have to wed a brute," Sansa says, "it could have been far worse, Jon," she says with a mirthless smile that guts him.

I am your brother, he wants to say, I cannot be your husband. Does she not know what they will be expected to do, is she still innocent of the ways of men and women? She cannot be.

But it is the thought of another man, of some old man, cruel man, with horrible lusts and a temper acted out upon his wife who is little more than a hostage, that stays his tongue.

They will break all the laws of men and gods by marrying, but if Jon can protect her then perhaps it will be bearable, perhaps he can see this through, at least until Robb beats the crown and comes marching into King's Landing. They can annul the wedding then, Jon thinks, and Sansa may wed a princely lord just as she had wished, a kind man, a man with soft hands and perfect manners, and forget her bastard first husband.

They are tugged apart, led to different parts of the keep. _You'll not see your bride until the wedding_ , Jon is told by a laughing steward, as he is poked and prodded and new clothes are fitted.

 

Jon does not know much of the faith of the seven, but he does know that no god-fearing septon would ever marry brother and sister, and yet the septon who presides over their wedding in front of the great oaken heart tree in the Red Keep's godswood, its brown bark without a face, does not falter as he repeats for them the oaths they shall make.

Sansa looks beautiful in her wedding gown, like some fine doll with a pleasant expression painted on, and it makes Jon ache with anger and sorrow. Why should they hurt her when she only ever did as she asked, when she is good at heart, pure.

The crowd who have elbowed their way into the godswood titter as Jon takes her hand, as the ribbons are tied around their wrists, as Joffrey calls out for them to kiss one another and as Jon swears in his head that he will cut Joffrey's tongue from his mouth, before pressing a dry kiss to Sansa's pale cheek.

She is barely blinking, barely breathing, it seems, she stands still as if posed and it makes Jon even more desperate for this mockery to be over, for them to be alone together somewhere where she does not need to keep the mask affixed to her face.

He does not allow himself to think of his family, of her family, as they stand before the tree, as they make their wedding vows.

Last night he could not sleep, fearing the very worst, fearing that Joffrey might demand that they have an audience on their wedding night, that their consummation is witnessed - a thought that had Jon vomiting out of the window of his small room twice and returning to his bed shivering and praying to gods old and new – but Joffrey is too drunk, too distracted by Lady Margaery, to join the bedding procession, though Jon saw him whisper horrible words in Sansa's ears before they left the hall and knows that he has done damage enough.

He tries to keep sight of Sansa, tries to fight towards her and push away the hands of the grown men who are tugging at her dress and ripping the seams, but the women carrying Jon along, tearing his own clothes, seem ravenous and wild as beasts, and when he is pushed into the chamber, he finds Sansa there alone, already in bed, with the sheets held up to her chin.

"Get away with you," Jon swears at the harridans clutching at him, pushing them off and shoving the door closed, bolting it and then leaning against the heavy wood, panting, his body flush with panic and fear, waiting for the noisy crowd outside to push their way inside at any moment.

As he waits, as he shivers in the cool room, wearing only his torn smallclothes, he hears the court leaving for further merriment elsewhere, and, taking a shaking breath, he turns to Sansa.

"Are you well?" he asks, "well enough," he corrects.

She nods. Her hands are not clutching the quilts so tightly any more and he can see the straps of her nightgown and is relieved that she did not have all her clothes ripped from her.

"Did they hurt you?"

"No more than the maids do when they prick my scalp with pins or jab their needles into my side, or scour me with rough rags in my bath. But you are," she says, eyes wide as she looks at the wounds from his past punishments, his misfortunes on the training yard.

"They are old wounds," he says and shivers again, padding towards the bed, praying that she will not be frightened of him too, that this farce of a marriage has not turned him into her enemy.

She moves further to the left side of the bed, shifting the quilts towards him so that they might have an equal share as he ducks into bed, feeling horribly awkward and ashamed for it. This is Joffrey's doing, turning natural sibling affection into something abominable and wrong. It doesn't matter what the court thinks, the words they said in the godswood, here now in this room they are only themselves, Jon thinks, half-brother and sister, and he will not let the king take that from them, steal more than he already has.

"Do you have a knife?" Sansa asks suddenly.

"What?"

She sighs and rolls her eyes and the glimpse of her former haughty self is a brief flare of warmth. "So we can leave blood on the sheets," she whispers and then flushes, turning her face away.

"Oh," he says. "But we can't, you need to be a maiden—"

"I _will_ be a maiden—" she says, her cheeks utterly pink now.

"Yes, but if the court think you aren't, then everyone will, and you won't be able to wed someone else once we're free."

"You think Robb will win?"

"Yes," Jon says, though truthfully he is not that certain, despite the news he hears of Robb's victories, of his valour on the battlefield. Jon should be there beside him, and every day the sick jealousy, the shame of not fighting for his land and family, wars in his breast with the relief that he is here with Sansa, that she is not alone. When his father had told him that he must accompany his sisters to King's Landing, that he could not join the Night's Watch yet, he had been so bitter he had cursed the gods, had wanted to run away like he did once as a boy when he was sick of the jokes about his mother. Are his curses responsible for the fate that has befallen his family? If they are then he should bear his punishment alone.

"This will protect you too," she says as she slips out of bed in her nightgown that looks sheer in the firelight and makes him shut his eyes lest he dishonour her by looking at what he should never see. She slides back into the bed with a bread knife in her hand. "No man will want a wife who has lain with her brother, who might bear his child, to marry his sons, but if they think we did not lay with one another, Joffrey might have you killed and marry me off to another. He will prefer to have us at court together, to mock us and make an example of our craven natures," she says.

"We should have never come south," Jon says, hating what this palace of filth has done to his sister, how she sees the very worst in people, how she has had to become a schemer. "Here," he says, taking the knife from her hand. He'll not let her mar her skin with it, hurt herself any more than she already has because of him, because he was not strong enough to flee from here with her, and with Arya too, to save them as his father would have wished.

She watches wide-eyed as he slides the knife under the sheets. "What are you doing?" she exclaims, rising to her knees and leaning over him.

"Cutting my thigh," he says with a pained grunt, turning so that the stinging wound smears on the sheets. "If I cut my hand someone might see and know that we were lying."

"That's clever," she says.

"I can be clever," he retorts, and chucks the cleaned knife across the room with a lazy throw, not bothering to leave the warmth of the bed.

"I was being sincere," she says, settling on her back beside him.

"Sorry," he says, "old habits," and then he blows out the candle beside him.

"I was horrible to you, wasn't I, when we were children."

"You weren't horrible."

"I was."

He can feel the bed shake with her tremors even as her voice sounds even. He would put a hand on her shoulder if he did not think she might rightfully shy from it. They were never close as children and at court they have been kept separate from one another, even after Ned died and Jon desperately tried to find her and comfort her but was kept away by guards who informed him that the proper place for a bastard was the servant's quarters.

"You followed your mother's lead, treated me as a bastard ought to be treated."

"I was wrong, forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive," he sighs as she shuffles her head on the pillow, as she rubs her feet back and forth on the sheets.

It has been so long since another shared his bed, since he fell asleep dozing with his brothers and sisters, he had forgotten how nice it was to have someone warm beside you, even if they are both being so very careful not to touch, the both of them lying as far away from one another as is possible in this small bed.

"I should ask for your forgiveness, for...Lord Stark's forgiveness, and that of the gods," he says. He cannot say the words "our father" here now, with them husband and wife in bed.

"You do not need my forgiveness," she insists but he knows that he does. Sansa has only ever wished to be the ladywife of some fine noble man, some prince, and now she will be spoilt goods, now her reputation shall never recover and people will jeer at her and mock her and judge her, his sweet sister with her perfect courtesies, her songs and her neat embroidery.

They are quiet for a moment, the murmur of the feast drifting in through the walls, the hum of the city through the shutters of the window.

"We shall share this room from now on," she says, "and I will complain to any who might listen if they force you back to the servant's quarters for we cannot be husband and wife when we sleep apart."

"Will that not make it worse?"

She snorts and then says in a small, sad voice. "I don't care," she says, "I know you have been treated awfully, that you have been hurt, but I cannot bear another night alone, Jon, shivering in my bed and thinking of father kneeling over that block, of what I did to put him there—" she sobs and her brave countenance, her courage, finally breaks, and Jon reaches across to hug her, to pull her head underneath his chin and rub a hand across her back over the thick quilt. Fuck everyone outside this room, he thinks, fuck anyone who might seek to make this moment, of a brother comforting his sister, wrong, they can say what they like, but their room, their bed, shall be a sanctuary for them both, he swears it.

"Hush now," he says, "you were only a child, trying to do what was right. You should have been better prepared and protected."

"I took his side," she gasps tearfully, " _Joffrey_ , I put him before my family."

"As you were taught to do," Jon says, "he was your betrothed." It is disloyal of him, he knows, but he is angry at Ned, at his father, for bringing them here, for walking into a trap.

"I'm frightened," she whispers, "I've tried so hard to be brave like mother, like Robb, like you."

"I'm not brave," he says, feeling her tremble in his arms, "I'm stupid, foolhardy." He's a coward who should have found some way to free them from this place, to lead her and Arya to safety.

"We'll help each other survive, won't we," she says.

"Of course we will," he says, lifting her face so he can see the tracks of her tears glistening in the darkened room, wiping them away with his thumbs, "Of course we will," he swears. It's been years since he's been so close to her, since they were small and used to play together with Robb before Catelyn intervened, but it doesn't feel strange to have her in his arms, it feels natural.

"Do you think mother will faint when she hears the news?" she asks and the reminder of Catelyn and her censure has Jon separating himself from Sansa, pulling the quilts up around her and shifting away from her on the bed.

"No, your mother is not the fainting sort."

"But she won't be angry with us, will she?" Sansa asks, sounding young.

"No," Jon lies, and as Sansa drifts into sleep he stays awake thinking of Catelyn, of her hearing what Jon has done - for that is what she will think, that this marriage is something Jon has _done_ , something he has taken from Sansa – and he feels a hot coal of shame burning in his belly.

 

*

 

Sansa has pictured her wedding many times, her wedding night less so, the first morning of her married life never. But she does not think that if she had, she might ever have pictured waking up to her half-brother beside her, his curls matted against his sleeping cheek, his breath whistling as the waking noises of the keep seep into the room.

She sits up on her elbows and looks at the scraps of the gown still on the floor, at her meagre belongings. They have a bed, they have clothes, and they have a tray of food left on the table, a feast by any poor man's reckoning, she thinks. Her daydreams about lovely things - silks, jewels, lemon cakes – are reserved for only the most desperate of times, when she must disappear inside herself to forget the pain and sorrow of the world, like yesterday in front of the heart tree, where her mind had been whisked away to some imagined land of finery where she lay on a couch soothed by a river-side breeze, eating sweets from a golden platter.

It is a childish, foolish, habit and she knows that she should better pray to the gods at these moments, but she is not so pious anymore, so pure.

Jon will keep her safe and it is something topsy-turvy that Joffrey has found the one husband for her that would die before he touched her or hurt her. And this way she might be able to protect Jon too, from the beatings the gold cloaks have given him and all his other punishments that Sansa has only heard in whispered rumours, catching sight of him in the throne room from afar now and then. It's true what she said to Jon, Joffrey will like the spectacle they make together, he will probably demand that they dance at feasts, that she sit upon Jon's lap, that she presses kisses to his cheek, and she will do it gladly to keep him safe. It is nothing that a sister would not do with a brother anyway, that she might have done with Robb, it only feels a little odd because she and Jon have been kept apart by her own foolish pride and her mother's scorn and are somewhat unfamiliar with each other.

Jon smells of home, she realised when he held her last night, of leather and fire and a cold northern breeze, of a man's sweat unadorned by the perfumes Joffrey and the male courtiers like to pretend they do not use.

He does not look like a boy any longer, like he did when the crown's wagons arrived at Winterfell, he has sparse hairs growing on his chest and his beard is no longer quite so patchy, his shoulders have filled out with muscle.

She herself is a woman now, having flowered, but she is not so full-figured as her mother, perhaps may never be with the way Joffrey has delighted in restricting the meals brought to her room, declaring that he will not have a fat girl for a wife. He may not have her for a wife at all now, she thinks triumphantly, no dishonourable man might. And she knows that Jon thinks of her future, her prospects, and worries, but romance, _love_ , is so far from her thoughts now, she wants only to survive and to be reunited with her family, for Robb to march on the south and cut down Joffrey and all of the gold cloaks where they stand, to revenge their father.

 _Father_ , she thinks, and her eyes snap shut, _forgive me, forgive me, I'm sorry, so sorry_.

A shift of movement in bed halts her silent prayers and she opens her eyes to see Jon peering blearily at the world and looking so ridiculous she might laugh if there was enough mirth left inside of her.

 _Good morrow, husband_ , she might tease him, if she did not loathe the thought of him looking sorrowful once more.

"They left a tray of food last night," she says instead, "the bread is hard but still good, and there is even a plate of cheese and dried fruits."

"Aye?" he mutters, rubbing a hand across his face and she slips from the bed to bring the tray back, noticing the way he turns his face from her so he does not see her in the lacy nightgown that the maids who dressed her delighted in telling her was a gift from Cersei herself. They will have to get more comfortable with each other, she thinks, he will have to get over his maidenly blushes.

And at that thought she stops, halfway in and out of bed, tray beside her on the quilt.

"Have you had lovers?" she asks.

"What?" Jon exclaims, whipping his head to look at her and then away while she shuffles under the bedclothes to cover herself.

"Have you had lovers?" she repeats.

"No, how could I have," he says disgruntedly, awkwardly stuffing a piece of dry bread into his mouth and scowling.

"I don't know," she says with a shrug. "But Theon was always talking of the brothels and of kissing the serving girls."

"Theon talked a lot," Jon says darkly.

"You've never visited a brothel then?"

He pauses and she chews on a piece of dried plum and watches as he shifts in his seat.

"I have," he admits, "but I didn't touch any of the women there."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't want there to be another child called Snow, because I know how hard it is to be a bastard."

"Oh, Jon," she says, touching his shoulder and then taking her hand back when he tenses. "Well," she says, drinking stale water from her cup, "when we are free, when Robb has won and we return north, you will have the chance to have a wife...or lovers," she adds uncertainly.

Jon huffs darkly. "I might have the comfort of a whore, but not a wife, Sansa, not a man such as me."

"You shall," she says stubbornly, "I'll make Robb find you a wife, a sweet one, a pretty one."

He shakes his head. "What was it you said, that no man will want a man who has wed his own sister for a husband for his daughter."

"I was trying to think the worst, because it's better to think that way, but the worst may not always come to pass." She places a too-warm piece of cheese on her tongue. "That is the lie I tell myself," she admits. "Isn't it a good one, Jon?"

He clucks his tongue. "Enough dark talk," he says firmly. "We won't talk of the future, or the past, when we're together we shall talk of the things that are here now...like this food," he says, tugging the tray towards him, "this terrible food."

She snorts at his frown. "Perhaps they wish to poison us with rancid cheese," she considers.

"They would be kinder to do it with cakes, don't you think, that would be more proper, more _courteous_ ," he muses with a dry smile that makes her laugh and flop back on the bed.

"What else will we talk of?" she asks.

"Of the threadbare quilt whose artistry leaves something to be desired."

"Or of the pins still in my hair that are making my scalp ache," she mutters, fingertips scrabbling in the thick snarls of her hair.

"You have pins hiding in there?" he says, no doubt baffled by anything to do with the fashions of women. "Here, I'll help," he says.

He'll only make it worse, she thinks, but dutifully turns her back to him. Yet she is pleasantly surprised by his nimble fingers.

"Your hair is soft," he murmurs once he has nearly finished, and his breath disturbs the fine hairs of her neck and makes her shiver, a motion that he confuses for her being cold. "We need to dress," he says then, stumbling out of bed. "They'll be knocking on the door soon no doubt come to have a gawp at us."

 

Sure enough, within the hour the sheet from their bed is whipped away by a maid and the gossip spreads lightning fast through the court, such that when she walks with Jon into that night's feast, every pair of eyes stares at them aghast, that a ripple of shocked laughter greets them.

"I thought you might need to be encouraged," Joffrey calls out to them as he eats messily from his plate, throwing nuts at the poor singer who is trying not to falter under such a bombardment, "but bastard blood is strong. I'm sorry to have wed you to such a brute, Sansa, but you might blame the man who raised him." He tsk's dramatically. "To do such a thing to your sister, it makes me _sick_."

 _If we make you sick then might we leave the feast_ , Sansa thinks of saying sweetly.

Cersei has the widest smile of all. She greeted Sansa when she sat down with a sharp hand on her shoulder and horrible whispered words that Sansa let herself forget the moment they were spoken. She is whispering something into her son's ear now, as he bats her away.

"You're right, mother, the happy couple did not get to dance at their feast yesterday. Come," he says, with a clap towards the musicians, "play something slow, something romantic," he orders as the court laughs.

"Don't fight it," she murmurs as she stands up and tugs Jon with her. "If he wants a spectacle we shall give him one."

"I'm not a good dancer," Jon grits out, "you know that."

"What are you two whispering about?" Joffrey calls out. "Is he filling your tender ears with filth, my lady?"

"He told me that he is not a good dancer, Your Grace," she says as she encourages Jon's hands about her waist as they reach the open floor, as she feels her legs tremble at all the eyes watching them.

Jon squeezes his hand, he must have seen her shiver, and nods solemnly.

"Not a good _dancer_ , eh?" Joffrey says delightedly, "well, I'm sure you two will have lots of practice."

"Look at me, Jon," she whispers, "don't look at anyone else, they're not here, it's just us two."

The music begins and he shifts her awkwardly around the floor as they stare at one another, letting their gaze be an anchor, a shelter from the storm.

"Closer!" Joffrey demands, "Are you not newlyweds? There's no point in pretending, bastard, we all know what you did to her, to your sister."

Jon's feet stumble and Sansa pulls him towards her, hides her face in his shoulder. His body is shaking, like a leashed animal, she thinks, and she hums along with the music as if she can soothe him, shutting her eyes as they dance, as her skirts sway about her legs, as she presses against his warm form.

She is not so good at pretending that she might forget the crowd around them, but with Jon to hold her she does not have the sick chill of fear that she felt before, when they were kept apart, and she hopes it is the same for him, that she can bring him comfort too.

 

*

 

A week ago, he dressed in servant's clothes and slept on a bare cot, was put to work sweeping the corridors near the kitchens as his back bled from a beating on the training yard, and here he is now, trussed in the clothes of a lesser noble, stomach warm with wine and meat, with a pretty girl dressed in velvets, with his wife, in his arms.

It is enough to make him dizzy, enough to have him clutching her more tightly than he should.

When they take their seats again, when Joffrey is bored of them and has called upon a troupe of acrobats to entertain him instead, the people nearest to them shift their chairs away and mutter curses under their breath, their noses lifted like Jon smells of shit, and Jon smiles at them darkly and chews at his cold food, drinking noisily from his cup.

If they want him to be a beast then he shall be. He shall sit next to them at their feasts, intrude upon them when they walk in the gardens or attend audiences in the throne room, and make them uncomfortable.

If only they didn't scorn Sansa too, if only they didn't look at her like she is at fault for what has happened to her.

He is glad when the feast is at an end and they can hurry back to their room and bolt the door, slip into bed and blow out the candles and breathe quietly together, letting the tumult of the feast melt away.

"You aren't a terrible dancer," she murmurs sleepily.

"A kind lie," he replies and she reaches over to hit him on the arm, her blow as soft as a pat.

"I wasn't lying. I've danced with worse. My toes aren't bruised at all," she says and he can feel the bed shakes as she wriggles her feet.

He has cause to practise his dancing again, with Joffrey bringing them to the floor half a dozen times in the next weeks, demanding they dance closer, faster, directing them as if they are his dolls. And each time, he concentrates on the sound of Sansa's humming, on the feel of her body in his arms, such that he can barely remember a time when he did not hold her, when he did not take her hand or guide her into a room with his hand on her waist, murmur comforting words close to her ear.

They are pariahs at court, little more than jesters, but it pleases Joffrey for them to appear as nobles and be treated thus, and so for now they are strangely safe, though this is not a thought Jon should have had, he thinks, on the day when Robb's next victory has Joffrey calling Jon in front of the throne to take the gold cloaks' punishment.

His beating only halts when Sansa tears herself free of her guard and falls to her knees in front of Jon, begging the king to save him.

"Now isn't this a touching sight," Joffrey declares as the gold cloaks sheath their swords. "Is it your brother you wish to save, or your husband, Lady Snow."

"Both," Sansa says, as Jon pants, the room spinning, his breath short from bruised ribs.

Joffrey cackles. "And I thought you were a lady, Sansa. Thank the gods that we never wed, hmm? Else I might have had to share a bed with a dog." He claps his hands together. "Well then, won't you comfort your brother-husband with a kiss? Don't you wish to save him?"

She shuffles closer to Jon as he blinks at her, feeling the slide of blood from his nose. You don't have to do this, he wants to plead.

She lifts shaking hands to cradle his face and then she kisses him, pressing trembling lips against his, tilting her head to the side and pausing, prolonging the kiss as Joffrey laughs and jeers.

Has she ever kissed anyone, Jon thinks woozily, nonsensically, perhaps this is her first and she does not know how to move her lips, how to part them so a tongue might slide past.

And with this thought, he jolts back, panting, and stares at her, at her flushed cheeks and the smear of blood on her chin to match his.

"A good show," Joffrey says. "I am convinced of your devotion. Away with you now," he sneers, "I'll not have the floors of my throne room stained with your traitor blood."

Jon staggers to his feet and Sansa pulls his arm across her shoulder as he takes halting steps down the aisle of courtiers who part for them to pass, a couple of them spitting on the ground before them as others call them the very blackest of names.

In their rooms, Sansa tears one of her shifts into bandages and tugs Jon's clothes from him, washing the blood from his wounds, strapping his ribs that creak when he breathes too deeply. He cannot muster the strength to talk, to find some words of comfort, it is as if they have been knocked from him, that her kiss has stolen his words away.

That night, he dreams of her, of Sansa. He dreams she is in his arms and he is kissing her, and he wakes with a cry that makes his ribs seize, that brings tears to his eyes, as she sleeps on unawares beside him.

 

*

 

Jon is struggling with their role at court, with the things they must do to keep themselves safe, and Sansa is trying to be understanding but, as he heals from his wounds, she finds herself being short with him, being scornful.

"You have to act like you love me," she mutters angrily when he stands a full step away from her, when Joffrey's eyes narrow at them from his throne.

"Sorry," Jon says, shifting closer but not close enough so that she is forced to pull his limp arm around her waist.

"I am doing my best," she tells him when they return to their rooms. "And so must you. We must give Joffrey what he wants." Jon is so stubborn, she thinks, stubborn like Arya, like a Stark.

He has his back to her, apparently studying the bare wall next to their bed.

" _Jon_ ," she says, well past the point of feeling ashamed for begging, "help me, please."

"Sansa," he says sorrowfully, turning around when he hears the short breaths that precede tears, and coming to her side, touching her shoulders carefully.

She won't cry about this, she won't let herself.

"I'm sorry," he says, shaking his head. "Forgive me, my head–" he shuts his eyes and gusts a sigh, opens them again and looks resolute. "I will be better, Sansa, I'll do anything to protect you, I swear it."

"I know you will," she says, and wraps her arms around his neck, hugs him close, feels her body soften at his familiar smell, at the comfort of his solid form against her.

He strokes a hand down the crown of her head. "You were always a better mummer than I was, better at pretending."

"What do you mean?" she asks, pulling back.

"Your stories and your songs when we were children. Sometimes I thought you might slip away into one of your daydreams and never come back. And the way you were after fath- after Lord Stark died, your careful words to Joffrey, how even your voice is when you speak to him."

"I was a lady at three, isn't that what mother said," she says ruefully. "A lady who shares a bed with her brother," she adds with a scoff and shakes her head. "This place will turn us mad if we let it, Jon," she says hollowly.

"We won't," he says, cupping the back of her neck in his warm palm, a touch that brings an odd shiver to her stomach. "The angrier Joffrey gets, the more punishments he metes out, the more victories Robb has on the battlefield, we must remember that."

 

*

 

A dream is only a dream, he tells himself firmly, and the comfort he feels in her arms is only natural. She is beautiful, his sister, and it is not a sin to notice that, to call her pale skin and blue eyes, her sweep of flaming hair, her figure, beautiful.

Would he let some passing fancy prevent him from keeping her safe, from upholding their mummery, would he be such a coward?

At the next feast, Joffrey orders Sansa to sit in her husband's lap, _like a tavern wench_ , and dutifully Jon pulls her down, tugs her towards him and feels his hands twitch on her side, feels the soft swell of her backside on his thighs—

"And won't you spare a kiss for him, for your brother-husband, Lady Snow?" Joffrey calls out.

"As you wish, Your Grace," Sansa says and because Jon cannot bear to have her press her lips against his so gently, so slowly, to prolong their kiss, he lifts her chin with his hand and kisses her himself, quickly, messily, smearing his lips against hers as the noblewoman nearest to them inhales sharply through her nose and the lord opposite them makes a sound like he might be sick.

When Jon pulls back, Sansa's cheeks are pinker than he has ever seen them, her lips are swollen and red, and Joffrey is laughing so hard that he has started to cough and Lady Margaery is slapping him on the back so he does not choke.

Jon feels a strange, hysterical humour twist his mouth into a grin as Sansa remains startled, her mouth wide and shocked, and Joffrey coughs and coughs.

He blames the wine later, when he is in bed beside Sansa, when he thinks of how he had touched Sansa's bottom lip with his tongue, his body remembering past kisses and not remembering that his tongue has no business near his sister's mouth.

He groans and rubs a hand down his face, shifts his limbs carefully on the mattress so as not to wake her. He apologised for his kiss when they lay down to sleep tonight, and Sansa repeated that he did not need her forgiveness, but her words were rote, her thoughts seemed elsewhere.

 

*

 

Sansa has not ever looked closely at a couple kissing, has not ever thought of kissing as something beyond a soft press of lips, but what Jon did, how he kissed her, has set her mind to racing.

She is not a total innocent, she has heard enough of Theon's jokes, of the veiled words of men and women at court, and been told how babes are made by her mother, but it has all been rather hypothetical, she has not really thought what it would be like to _touch_ someone like that, to be so _close_ to someone.

And now, when she dances with Jon, when he puts his hands tight around her waist or spins her by the hips, when he drags her into his lap, she feels a tremble in her belly, feels her body heat with sinful thoughts she should not have.

Is she craven to imagine her brother when she pictures the things that might happen in the bedchamber? It is only that it is hard to picture some other faceless man, that there is no other at court who she might wish to think of fondly.

She likes the way Jon smells, likes slipping into bed with him – at the end of a day trussed tightly in another garish gown, standing for hours in the throne room with the court, or sitting tense at a feast, dancing dance after dance, steeling herself against the japes and murmured insults of the court when she walks with Jon in the gardens – and feeling like she has come home, that she is safe.

She notices things about him now, about how pleasant the rub of his beard feels on her cheeks, how his hair curls tighter when they have sat in the steaming feast hall or when he comes back from the training yard where he is made an example of by Joffrey and his men and returns to her needing wounds washed and tended to. She notices the plains of his chest, the way his stomach twitches when she touches it, the flex of his bicep, the strength of his wrist.

She was always good at pretending, perhaps that is why things have got confusing. It is better to think that, than that she is craven at heart, that the girl who spoke the words that killed her father still lives inside of her, that she has not changed.

"And how is married life treating you, my dove," Cersei asks her, with beady eyes, one morning as they take tea on the terrace overlooking the archery field.

It is rare for Sansa to be invited to join such a meeting, for although Cersei delights in the mockery of Jon and Sansa before the court, she is not so stupid, Sansa thinks, as to not know what an insult it would be to her other guests to have them, or Sansa alone, in attendance.

Margaery will wed Joffrey soon, and the Tyrell forces will join with those of the Lannisters and the Crown. They say that this will be the end of the rebellion, but more and more, Sansa hears the name of Stannis Baratheon whispered, hears rumours about his gathering of forces.

The Crown cannot fight on two fronts, Jon has told Sansa, as they lay in the dark at night, before they turn their talk to less fraught things, to the meal they ate that night, to the hideous dress Joffrey had gifted to her.

Sansa does not have ladies maids any more; though some poor servant draws the shortest straw to bring them water and collect commodes and trays from their room, to bring them hot water for a bath when Jon goes down to the kitchens to entreat them for it; and so it is left to Jon to dress her, to pull the laces of her gowns tight and help her tug her heavy skirts down each evening before she tiptoes behind the screen to change her shift. Having his careful hands on her does not help her feelings, she thinks, remembering how he had laced her into the gown she wears a few hours ago, how his breath had tickled her neck, how his hand was warm on her side through her stays as he kept her in place.

"It is treating me well, Your Grace," she replies hurriedly as Cersei frowns at her delay.

She must keep her wits about her, she thinks, and not get distracted by foolish thoughts.

"He is not being rough with you, your brother-husband, is he?" The queen mother asks with lascivious false concern.

Sansa shakes her head.

"And might there be the pitter patter of tiny feet sometime?" Cersei adds, eyes gliding down Sansa's middle, smirking as she sips from her wine cup.

"If the gods wish it," Sansa says, feeling her heart kick in her chest.

Cersei is shrewd and clever and if there is no child within a year, she might realise that Jon and Sansa are only pretending. But Sansa remembers hearing that cousins who married in the past struggled to conceive, knows well of the Targaryen's struggles, so perhaps they might simply say that the gods have not chosen to bless them with issue.

Her father said that Cersei and her brother were guilty of incest, that Joffrey was not a true Baratheon, and well can Sansa believe it. If she and Jon were ever forced to bear a child, would it be a monster like him? No, she thinks firmly, Myrcella is not a monster, only a little fool, and Tommen wouldn't hurt a fly.

"Now, tell me Sansa, for you know I can keep a secret, is it true that you were not a maiden on your wedding day, that your brother had already plucked you?" Cersei asks, as her ladies maid titters beside her and Sansa tries to hold back a scowl. "For that is no doubt where your father got his foolish ideas about myself and my brother. To think that he accused us of such an abomination and all the while he had a ravenous wolf in his own pack, a bastard eager to steal the innocence of his own half-sister." She clucks her tongue and Sansa pictures that same tongue being pecked out by a large eagle, by Ghost himself. "It is so very lucky that your true nature was discovered before you wed my son. To think of it!" Cersei says with a shiver, popping a piece of cake into her smiling mouth.

Sansa has not been given a plate and she knows that if she reached for cake or fruit from the platter that Cersei would only tap her over the knuckles hard enough to hurt, and say something about how no man might want a fat wife.

"Lady Margaery is far better suited to your son," Sansa says sweetly, "far lovelier than I could ever be."

Cersei's smile dims. Everyone knows that she is not fond of Joffrey's new betrothed, that the two schemers circle each other like hunters at court.

"Indeed," the queen says, sneering as her eyes glance at the archery field, at Margaery hitting target after target, the sun gleaming in her honeybrown hair, her teats rising out of her gown each time she lifts the bow, as Joffrey claps her on from the shade of a golden chaise.

 

*

 

The court is not separate from the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, no matter how its glitter and petty gossip, its merriment and endless distractions, might have one think, and as soon as Stannis makes an alliance with the North, with the traitor Robb Stark, panic scampers through the Red Keep and its occupants ready for war – the armouries fills the air with fire and hot metal, the clash of hammer on steel, of sword tested against sword, while men in armour clatter to and fro, as weeping and wailing can be heard around corners and in doors bolted closed, as wagons squeak their way out of the keep and the city as some choose to flee the coming attack.

Joffrey is on a jaunt with his betrothed when the news arrives and it is for this reason only that Jon thinks he is not killed, beaten to death in the throne room. Instead, by the time the king returns, it is clear that the speed of the rebels have surpassed any imagining, that Robb's forces are close to beating the Lannisters and that Stannis' fleet are but half a day away.

Joffrey orders Jon to fight in his army, the Master-at-arms throwing him a blunt sword to fight with and rusted armour worn thin and useless. Joffrey means to have him cut down during the battle, Jon surmises, stabbed from behind, but he is damned if he falls now, when their salvation is so close, when Robb is doing all he can to battle south.

"I'll find you," he whispers to Sansa as they cling to each other in the tumult of the throne room, "Hide, and I'll find you. Keep yourself safe," he begs, holding her face in his hands as he sees her bottom lip quiver, as she clutches his wrists and says his name like a prayer.

"Run from the battle," she begs him, "don't try to be brave. We'll hide together, we'll wait for Robb."

"I will, Sansa," he says, "I'll slip away as soon as I can, I won't leave you."

But they have not noticed that they have an audience, that Joffrey has fixed his beady gaze on them.

"A touching scene!" he calls out, clattering down from the throne in his jewelled armour. "But is that the way to say farewell to your wife, Lord Snow? This may be the very last time you see her after all. Don't you want to give her a memory to warm the lonely nights when some other man shall take her for his prize?"

Jon feels his jaw crack with the strength it takes to bite back the words he wants to say, with his fury.

"Well?" Joffrey cries.

"Husband," Sansa says softly, her face so earnest that Jon can't help but wish she speaks for true.

"Sansa," he says sorrowfully, and he kisses her like he has dreamed of, sucking that trembling bottom lip, licking past it to swipe his tongue against hers, tilting her head so that he can move closer, can kiss her deeper, swallowing the startled noises she makes, his eyes closed as if he could shut away everyone else in the world, while she clutches her fingers tightly in his hair.

And then he is being tugged away by one of Joffrey's guards, looking back over his shoulder as Sansa, cheeks flushed and eyes shimmering, disappears into the crowd.

At the battlements, Jon tries to find a wall to stand in front of, his back to the stones, so that he can keep watch on the other soldiers and their swords and spears, their daggers. Joffrey is already whining like a child and the air smells of piss and fear as the alarum is sounded and the black shapes of Stannis' fleet are spied on the horizon.

Flaming missiles filled with pitch are flung from catapults from the ramparts of King's Landing, fiery arrows are shot, and the great metal chain that crosses the bay is lifted, but every attack seems to glance off the invading fleet, and the chain breaks with a horrible whine that splits the air and has one soldier near Jon wailing that the gods have forsaken them.

It is said that Stannis has a witch in his court, a red woman who can command the elements, and Joffrey and his courtiers have delighted in mocking the noble, _honourable_ , Stannis for believing the words of a bedslave, and yet none are mocking her now, none look at the scene before them, the ships that do not catch alight when they are hit by flaming arrows, that do not shatter under catapult missiles, and do not see witchcraft at work, do not know that they are doomed.

When the boats land on the beaches and the soldiers rush forward through the dark rain, and as commanders call for boulders and burning oil to be poured onto the invading army, Jon hangs back, shoving aside the men who are floundering and panicking and tripping over one another.

Joffrey is squealing orders and as a crack of thunder has men shouting, Jon sees his chance and, shoving the rusted helmet down on his nose, he dashes forward to jab the tip of his sword up into Joffrey's armpit, right through the fragile gap in his pretty-boy armour.

Then he falls back, melts into the crowd, as Joffrey swears and looks wildly about. It is not a killing blow, for that would be too dangerous to do here now surrounded by Joffrey's guards, but his sword arm will be useless now and if the wound is not seen to then he will bleed out soon enough.

As Jon runs back into the castle, shouldering aside soldiers, bashing through gates and clattering up stairs, he glances back over his shoulder and sees the beaches swarming with men and knows that Stannis will win within hours.

Now he must find Sansa and keep her safe.

 

*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up in Chapter Two: our heroes return to Winterfell and things get even more complicated...


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I had to split this into three chapters because the word count was getting unwieldy]

 

 

Sansa is trying to listen for the sounds of the battle, the landing of Stannis's fleet, but the walls of the maidenvault are three feet deep and any scant sounds that might sneak through the narrow windows are drowned out by the crying of the women, by Cersei's drunken drawl.

She had planned to hide elsewhere but Cersei had dug her fingernails into her arm and dragged Sansa along with her. Perhaps if she had not been so distracted, if her heart had not been fluttering strangely after Jon's kiss in the throne room, she would have had her wits about her.

She is a silly fool to be thinking about kisses now, when death is at her doorstop, bringing her fingers to touch her lips as she remembers the taste of him, the way he held her close. A silly little girl, with wicked thoughts that can never come true.

Instead, she might pray for Jon, that he survives the battle, but she does not want to consider that he might _not_ survive, so, really, perhaps it is better that she thinks of the kiss and not the danger he is in—

"Are you frightened, Sansa?" Cersei calls out, startling her from her thoughts.

"No, Your Grace."

Cersei laughs. "I don't believe you. Drink," she orders, holding up her own glass, "it will give you courage, it will help you bear it when the soldiers rush inside these walls eager to rape you," she declares and then the door to the maidenvault crashes open, causing every woman and girl in the room to scream and cry with horror, to rush back in one panicked mass as Sansa braces herself against the wall.

But it is a Lannister soldier who has blundered inside, come to report back on the battle, come to say that the Crown is losing, and in the mayhem, and as Cersei throws her cup at the bloodied soldier and grapples with him, Sansa lifts up her skirts and flees from the room and from the tower.

She will not linger there to be found, to be hurt and killed in that horrible tower, she will go to her rooms and wait for Jon, just as they have planned. She will survive King's Landing, and return home, she swears, as she races through the halls, dodging fleeing courtiers and soldiers alike, ignoring the roar of battle outside, the din of thunder, her own panic.

She is almost to their rooms, but a corridor away, when a man wearing armour oozing with pitch and blood blocks her path. He looks at her as if she is meat, and he tells her every horrible thing he is going to do to her, and when she turns, she sees another man, just as wild, staggering towards her. She is trapped, her fine gown like a shining banner.

She reaches for her belt, for the worn scabbard hidden in the folds of her skirts and unsheathes the dagger, holding it in her shaking fist.

Jon has been teaching her how to use a dagger at close quarters, how to do the most damage. He gave her the dagger three nights ago and they have practised for hours, with her lunging to stab him and him dodging out of the way, putting his hands on her hips, her waist, her shoulders, to show her the right way to stand, the right way to thrust a knife in a man's gut.

 _Here_ , he had said last night, pointing to his neck and then his inner thigh, _is where you can do the most damage with the smallest of blades, can make a man bleed out within minutes_ , and then he had danced out of her way, confident, haughty, until he tripped in her skirts and landed on his back with a groan and she had landed on top of him, thighs astride his waist.

 _Here?_ she had teased, holding the dagger to his neck as he panted and looked up at her, startled, and then his hands had moved to her waist, and she had felt the strength of him between her thighs, and it was her turn to be distracted as he rolled her onto her back and propped himself up over her, his eyes dark and inscrutable.

 _Here_ , he said, and held the dagger in her fist to his neck, _don't hesitate._

 _I won't,_ she had said, and he looked at her lips as if he might kiss her, there, alone in their rooms where there was no need for kisses, no need to pretend, but instead he had coughed and stood up and busied himself with sharpening his own dagger pilfered from the armoury stores. _  
_

She doesn't hesitate now, when the man lunges for her. He has no helmet on and he has lost his gorget and as he grips her upper arm tight enough to have her crying out, she stabs him right there in the neck where Jon has taught her and the blood comes gurgling out hot, sprays her face as she tries to push him away, bruises her knee against his armour and drops the dagger in the struggle.

When he falls, the sleeve of her gown is trapped between two plates of his armour and as she struggles to escape, the other man approaches and reaches for her, and she cannot die here now, she _cannot_ —

A growl splits the air and a flash of white and then the man behind her screams as he is attacked by a beast.

She rips her sleeve from her bodice and picks up the bloodied dagger and when she turns, the man is silent and a white direwolf with red eyes stands atop his body.

" _Ghost_ ," she sobs and the wolf bares his teeth and bounds towards her, butting her in the stomach with his head like he is only a pup and not a ferocious animal. "Thank you, boy," she says, and bends to press kisses to his soft ears, rubs a hand down his flank.

Jon finds them thus a few moments later.

"It is not my blood," Sansa says when he grabs her and runs his hands over her limbs, as if he might find a terrible wound. "I didn't hesitate," she says, feeling her chin start to twitch.

"Good, _good_ , Sansa," he says softly, looking solemn. He smells of rain and metal and blood, of the carnage outside, and she is so thankful to see him, to have his arms around her. "Oh, Jon," she says and starts to cry as he hushes her and strokes a hand down her back.

"I thought the worst," he says, "when I saw the blood. I thought I was too late," he says, voice breaking, and it is her turn to comfort him now, to kiss him on the cheek as he swipes at his eyes.

"We need to hide," he says, as shouts come closer, "the battle is almost over," and he pulls her by the hand inside their rooms and busies himself with barricading the door as Ghost stands sentinel beside her.  

 

*

 

After a long night, in which a king is killed and another crowned, and an army defeated, Jon waits in a line with the other remaining nobles for an audience with Stannis.

Sansa is safe in their rooms, he reminds himself, the battle is over, and yet he is thankful that he made sure she had her dagger close at hand, just in case. He does not think he will ever forget the horror of finding her soaked in blood, of thinking that he was too late.

That the king's solar is half the keep away from their rooms has him clenching his jaw, glancing behind him as if he could look through walls and see her. If he had his way, he thinks, as the next nobleman scurries out of the solar, muttering angrily about the stubborn new king and his outrageous proclamations, he would never spend a single moment out of her sight.

"Lord Snow, I was told that you fought on Joffrey's side," the king says when Jon enters, looking up from a tall stack of papers.

"I was pressed into service, Your Grace, but once the battle began, I returned to the keep to protect my sister."

It would do no good to boast about the wound he gave Joffrey, the king would only think him lying to curry favour. Jon did not do it for glory, so that everyone might know his name, he did it for revenge.

"Some might call that a cowardly act," Stannis muses, studying him.

Stannis does not seem like the kind of man who might welcome empty platitudes so Jon says nothing.

"As King, I shall of course annul your farce of a wedding—" Stannis continues, lifting his quill.

"No," Jon says, "you cannot."

"What?"

"The marriage was consummated." Jon states, setting his jaw, his heart racing in his chest.

They said that Stannis was honourable but Jon knows nothing of the man's character, of the words his witch whispers in his ear, and Sansa is a prize that might be gifted to one of his bannerman, like a title or a parcel of land. Jon hasn't protected her for this long only to have her fall into the hands of some brutish man.

" _Seven Hells_ , boy, she is your sister. Are you so craven?"

Jon flushes. "We did what we had to do to survive Joffrey's rule, Your Grace."

Stannis shakes his head, his teeth gritted. "I'll leave you to your liege lord's censure, and his mother's," he adds. "Once the last of the fighting in the Riverlands is over, you'll be escorted north by my men and returned to your family, but until then you'll keep to your rooms, such craven behaviour is not welcome at my court."

Bone-weary relief, joy, wars in Jon's breast with horrified apprehension. If he had known that Stannis was to let them go home, he would not have declared their marriage true— or would he, he thinks darkly; does some foolish, possessive part of him believe that he may stay married to his sister when they return home to the North?

"Thank you, Your Grace," he says with a bow.

"You need not thank me, boy, I am merely fulfilling the terms of my agreement with your brother," Stannis declares and waves him away distastefully.

As Jon walks down the corridors, passing servants cleaning blood from the walls and sweeping away muck from soldier's boots, his feet drag as if he can delay what is to come.

How could he have done this to Sansa, now, when they are so close to going home?

He pauses on the threshold of their room, watching as she frowns over her mending, humming a quiet song as her needle works to and fro, her hair like a curtain of flame.

He loves her, his wife, his sister, and he cannot bear to be parted from her. And yet he shall be.

"Jon?" she says, looking up from her sewing.

He tries to summon a smile.

"What's wrong?" she asks, walking towards him as he shies away from her.

"I told the king that our marriage was for true, I'm sorry, Sansa," he says.

"Why are you sorry? Everyone else thinks the same."

"We're going home," he says, taking her hands carefully in his, "his men are to take us North, to Winterfell."

"Oh, Jon," she cries and wraps her arms around his neck as he holds her and breathes in her faint perfume, the way she always smells of home.

"Home," she says and he nods, squeezing his eyes shut.

 

*

 

All she had wanted was to leave King's Landing, and yet it feels strange to do so, to ride out with Jon by her side and six of Stannis's men in armour. She feels exposed by the wide sky and the open land before her, as if she is so used to being held prisoner that freedom makes her nervous.

Ghost has no such qualms, he delights in running hither and thither, returning with small animals caught in his bloodied mouth.

"He's grown wild without me," Jon says when they make their stop for the night at an inn, peering out the window of their room at the white shape in the yard.

"He's just bringing you presents," she says, as she removes her boots and winces, "he missed you."

Jon smiles at that, a boyish smile that pleases her, and then frowns to see her in pain. "They should have given us a carriage," he says.

"A carriage would slow us down," she says, as Jon kneels before her and takes her stockinged feet in his warm hands. She gusts out a sigh at the feel of his thumb rubbing down her arches, ignoring the way her body heats from such a simple touch. "I'm surprised we get to stay in inns, I had thought we would have to sleep in the open."

Jon shakes his head. "He couldn't have won the throne without Robb, without the North, he owes us. A few coins for an inn for the night is the least he can do."

The soldiers accompanying them are courteous but unfriendly, they look at Jon with suspicion, at them both with distaste. Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms must have heard by now of the Stark brother and sister who have wed, and this is just a taste of how things will be as they journey further North, she thinks with some trepidation.

Jon was the one who told the innkeeper they would need only one room and Sansa had been glad of it, despite the mutter of the servant who showed them up the stairs, she would hate to be spending the night apart from him, to have a cold bed.

"Are you looking forward to it, to returning home?" she asks when they are abed and the candle has been blown out.

"Of course," he says but his voice sounds hollow.

"It will be different," she ventures.

"Aye."

"And strange." She turns her back to him. "Father will not be there," she says in a small voice.

"No, he won't," Jon says and she feels his hand stroke down her back. "But Robb will, and Bran and Rickon—" It was only when they left the Red Keep that they heard of the sack of Winterfell and how their brothers had hidden and been found safe once the Ironborn had fled. "—and mother," she says as Jon takes his hand back. "And maybe Arya will come back when she knows it's safe," she adds.

"Aye," Jon says and she turns back towards him and rests her head on his shoulder. He blames himself for Arya running away, she knows. There has been no trace of her in King's Landing but the king would not allow them to remain in his city for any longer to find her, saying that he would set his men to the task instead.

"We'll wear furs again," she says, thinking of Winterfell and the cold as she lays her hand on his chest and he picks it up to squeeze.

"We'll wear furs," he says, "and drink ale, and eat Old Nan's meat pies."

She smiles. "And no more fancy gowns," she says.

He snorts like he does not believe her.

"I hated those gowns," she insists.

"You hate the northern fashions more," he teases.

"Maybe so. Maybe I'll just have to find some samite and beaded silk and make my own."

"You won't have to ever wear pins in your hair," he says, yawning as he slips his fingers along her cheek to find a lock of hair, his touch making her shiver and her toes curl.

"Aye," she says and he huffs a laugh.

 

Ghost runs away into the wolfswood when they first spy Winterfell. Sansa does not blame him from fleeing, she might run away herself if her horse was not following the others.

Jon looks solemn beside her, his fists are tight on his reins. She smiles at him, trying to pretend that everything will be well.

This morning, as all mornings on their journey, they woke tangled up with each other, clutching one another tightly like they feared they might be separated in the night. After the second morning, they had stopped apologising, stopped pulling themselves away from each other awkwardly, and laid there for some time in the early morning quiet, listening to each other's heartbeat, swallowing words unsaid, until a maid knocked on their door to rouse them and they reluctantly parted to dress themselves wearily in riding clothes.

At least she will not have to ride a horse again, not ever if she does not wish it, she thinks as she feels the ache in her hips burn. It will be like she never left, she tells herself, she will embroider and read her well-worn books and practise her harp and—

She has forgotten what else she did, before she left, how she spent her time. Is she supposed to be Sansa Stark again now, and not Sansa Snow? She cannot be that naive girl again, the silly one with her head lost in songs, the one who was taken in by Joffrey's horrible charms, the one who dreamed of a golden prince.

That's not who she is anymore, she thinks, as she meets Jon's sorrowful gaze and the walls of their home rise before them.

 

*

 

Sansa is swept up by her tearful mother and hurried inside the keep before Jon has even jumped down from his horse. It is Robb who greets him, thumping him on the back, looking like he has aged ten years in the time they have been apart, with his thick beard and strong shoulders, his kingly bearing.

"I was sorry not to fight beside you," Jon says as Robb studies him.

So this is how things will be, Jon thinks, they will all pretend that what happened in King's Landing never happened, and he should be glad about that, he should be joyful that Sansa will be free now to wed who she wishes, that Jon will have a place here at home, but it is a hollow joy.

"I could have used you on the battlefield, and Ghost," Robb says, searching behind him.

"He's been living wild in the Crownlands," Jon says. But maybe he was always wild, maybe Jon was too, a bastard with bastard lusts.

A small shape barrels into him then as Rickon hugs him and then Jon is being led inside to Bran who waits on a chair and who Jon hugs for so long that Bran hits him on the arm to get him to let him be.

Jon tries not to notice the people who stare at him - the Stark men, the servants – and ignores the trembling he has felt in his hands since he first saw the walls of Winterfell.

This was a mistake, he had thought, they should not have returned home. But where else should they have gone? he had wondered hysterically. Should they have run away and made new lives with new names, lived in a hovel somewhere?

Winterfell smells of smoke and scorched stone, of embers, but there are already scaffolds of wood and builders ferrying materials across the yards, the sound of hammer and axe ringing in the air.

Jon drifts towards the great hall, feeling untethered without Sansa beside him, feeling as if he has woken up from some strange dream.

"Jon," a voice hisses and then Sansa tugs him inside a room as a servant carrying water on each shoulder hurries past.

"Sansa," he says with relief, hugging her as if they have been apart for days and not just an hour or so.

"My mother wishes for me to marry a Frey," she says. "Can you believe it, Jon, to survive and arrive home only to be wed off to a _Frey_ , to leave for the Twins."

"What?"

She nods tightly, twists her fingers together.

"Does she mean for you to leave now?" he says, horrified.

"Robb broke his oath when he married Jeyne Westerling and the Freys are angry."

"I don't give a damn what they are," he says, fury making his voice harsh.

"She can't force me," she says, with a nervous toss of her hair. "And if she does, I'll just use my dagger," she smiles but it does not reach her eyes.

"She can't force you," he declares, "no one can. And I won't let you be dragged off now that you've made it home, I won't," he says, holding her face in his hands, brushing his thumb against her soft cheek and watching her eyelashes flutter.

"I need to go," she says reluctantly, "or else she'll come and find me."

"We'll talk again tonight," he says and it is only after she has left the room, with a kiss to his cheek, that he remembers that they won't be sharing a bed tonight, that they are not allowed to anymore.

He heads for the armoury, thinking he can ignore his whirling thoughts, his dread, by slicing at a target with a sword, when he runs into Robb.

"What's this about the Freys and Sansa?" Jon demands.

Robb's easy smile dims. "Mother thinks—"

"I don't care what she thinks, Sansa doesn't want to wed a Frey, to leave her home."

"There are many discussions to be had, things to be worked out," Robb states firmly. "You don't know what it was like here, after father died. Hard decisions have to be made."

"You don't know what it was like at court," Jon replies bitterly. "You think we had it easy in that den of vipers? That we know nothing of politics? That Sansa has come through all that just to be sent away?"

"I know things must have been difficult," Robb says awkwardly, looking over Jon's shoulder, "and we do not ever need to speak of it," he says quickly, "of your mummery—"

Jon feels his heart break in his chest. Robb knows Jon, or thinks he does, he believes that Jon is honourable enough to pretend to be Sansa's husband, to blacken his own name by faking her blood on the sheets, just as Jon had set out to do, but he doesn't know that Jon really _is_ a bastard, he doesn't know the way Jon lusts after Sansa, his half-sister, and of the things they have done.

If Sansa had not told him about the Frey they would press her to wed—

"It wasn't a mummery," Jon says with a dry mouth and a weight like a boulder in his gut.

"What are you saying?" Robb says, his voice tight, his eyes growing wild.

Jon stands his ground, feels his knees shake.

"What are you saying, man?" Robb grits out, a look of dawning horror on his face.

"We are husband and wife for true," Jon says and then throws up his arms to block Robb's blows as his brother flies at him, crying that he will tear him limb from limb.

Robb is vicious in his fury, wild with it as Jon staggers and grunts at every hit, but eventually Robb is pulled off him by three of his men.

Jon gets to his feet and spits blood from his mouth, rolling his burning shoulders and fingering his bruised jaw, feeling numb despite the pain.

"How could you," Robb says with tears in his eyes, "You were supposed to protect her!"

"I did what I did to protect her."

" _Seven Hells_ , can you hear yourself?? Mother warned me about bastards, she told me who you were and I defended you!"

Jon keeps his jaw lifted, there is nothing he can say to that.

"You are no brother of mine," Robb swears and spits on the ground, "get out of my sight."

 

*

 

"Jon will take the black, of course," her mother says as she busies herself around Sansa's new room, tidying the furs, lifting the lid of the chest which holds some of Catelyn's old clothes.

" _No_ ," Sansa says, getting to her feet, "why would he? Why should he be punished?"

Sansa had been waiting in her room for her mother's return when she heard the shouts from outside, when she saw her brothers come to blows. Jon will have told Robb the same thing he told Stannis, she knows, because he was trying to protect her from her mother's schemes and oh, she feels so guilty she might be sick, even as she also feels a thrumming pride, a happiness that now she will not have to marry another, that they cannot ever be parted from one another. For the septon wed them before a heart-tree, it matters not that they are half-brother and sister, she thinks stubbornly.

"He has no place here, Sansa. And he should be punished for taking what was not his to have, for doing what he did." Her mother shakes her head, her mouth quivering with anger. "If your father was alive he would take his head for what he did to you—"

"No," Sansa says, aghast, "he wouldn't, he would understand that Jon did what he did to protect me."

"Oh, my child, you have suffered so, you have lived in such a den of iniquity," Catelyn says, taking her by the shoulders, looking so wrought it makes Sansa want to cry. "He is a bastard, Sansa, and was covetous of your brother, he wanted what was not his to have."

"He will not go to the Wall, I forbid it," she says, stamping her foot like she is a child again, but her mother makes her feel like one.

"And who are you to make such an order?" Catelyn says with a note of scorn and then softens, turning sorrowful. "Do you not want a husband, a family?"

"I _have_ a husband." And I thought I had a family, Sansa thinks.

"Sansa, you have things so muddled in your head. You need to rest, then you will think clearly again," her mother says soothingly.

"You think I am mad?" she laughs.

"You have had a terrible time, you have survived horrors. You need some time to recover."

"I shall never recover if you send Jon away, if you make him take the black," she states. "I will turn mad then, I will tear out my hair and scream and scream and _scream_."

" _Sansa_ ," Catelyn says, shaking her by the shoulders until she pushes her mother away.

Catelyn smooths down her skirts, looking wounded, looking fearful, her eyes darting around the room. "You need some rest, we will speak more of this tomorrow," she says and leaves the room.

Sansa slams the door shut behind her and throws herself onto the bed, muffling her cries in the furs and wishing Jon was there to comfort her, that she was with Jon to comfort him.

 

*

 

Jon expects to be clapped in iron for what he has done, to be shipped off to the Wall without an opportunity to say goodbye to Sansa, but he is marched to his old rooms instead, in the part of the keep where the wind blows through cracks that have yet to be fixed, where the stone is black from the Ironborn fires.

A guard is placed outside his door at all hours of the day and night, food and water are brought to him, and when, on the fifth day of pacing back and forth in his room, of staring out of the tiny window at the grounds below, he asks if he is allowed outside, he is led to the yard furthest, he notes, from the new royal wing where Sansa's chambers are, and is watched by five men as he breathes in the cold night air and glances around at the dark shapes of the towers and the walls, as the watchfires glance off the guards's swords ready in their hands.

They are trying to decide what to do with him, Jon thinks, trying to decide the fate of a bastard brother of the King in the North who took the maidenhead of Winterfell's most precious daughter.

And yet many of the men, the warriors, at Winterfell are young, having taken up their fallen father's swords, and some of them trained alongside Jon in their youth, perhaps some of them do not believe the stories told, or more likely, they do not think he would dare do anything else to offend the Young Wolf under his very roof and so sometimes, during the many feasts that Robb and his new wife host to repair alliances, to secure his rule of the north, Jon's guard melts away to join the celebrations and Jon slips free of his cell.

The first time, he had tried his hardest not to go to her, he had ranged the grounds in the dark, stretching his legs, gathering information from overheard conversations and from a cursory check of the stables and the armoury, the craftsmen's huts and the soldier's camp. But, soon enough, he found himself creeping towards the Great Hall, swiping a cloak from a drunk sleeping by the doorway, and ducking in through the servant's door to peek into the hall, to see her sitting beside her mother looking sad and so very alone.

He had watched her for half an hour before he slipped back to his cell, taking the cloak with him out of some sullen mood.

The second time, he hadn't bothered to make his tour of the keep first, but had taken his perch in the same spot straightaway, watching her through the curtained doorway, watching as she stared at the food on her plate and ignored the men asking her to dance and her mother's cross words both.

Robb looks so much like Ned in his broad fur cloak, sitting at the head of the table, that it makes Jon's breath catch, makes him feel a needle of shame, as if Ned had come back from the grave and would turn his head and see Jon hiding there and know him for the craven he is. Ned had given him a home, a family, and Jon had betrayed him.

But it is not Ned, nor his other family, that Jon thinks of the next fortnight as he waits in his cell. It's her.

He wakes from dreams where she lies beside him and when he reaches to find a cold bed, he is wounded anew. He remembers how it was to dress her in her fine gowns, to stroke his knuckles down her back, feel the heat of her through her thin shift, how soft her hair was through his fingers, how her waist felt in his hands, her backside on his thighs when she sat in his lap, how her cheeks flushed when they danced and the taste of her when he kissed her.

The third time Jon slips from his cell, the hour is later, the hall is rowdy and he knows that some of the women will have already taken their leave, and so he wastes no time in hurrying straight to the door of her bedchamber, slipping inside as she lets out a startled yelp and sets down her hairbrush before the mirror.

The smile she gives him is the best thing he has seen in weeks, and her happiness makes his cheeks hurt with his own smile as she runs to him and he takes her in his arms, embracing her tightly.

"I missed you," she murmurs, hiding her face in his shoulder.

"So did I," he says, stroking a hand through her hair.

"I don't want to ever be apart again. Jon, what should we _do_ -"

"Let's not speak of it, let's not speak of anything outside this room, like we used to."

"I missed you," she says again, tugging him tightly to her. "How long can you stay?"

"Until the dawn," he says and she looks up at him with her pretty blue eyes and pretty pink pout and then she yawns, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

"You're tired," he says, chucking her under the chin. "Too many dances at the feast?" he asks, trying to joke but hearing the jealousy hum underneath his words.

"No," she says, shaking her head and yawning again, "I won't dance with anyone but you."

"Sansa—" he says softly, ruefully, stroking his thumb down her cheek. "You need your sleep," he says, touching the dark shadows under her eyes.

"I can't sleep without you next to me," she whispers.

"I'll stay with you until dawn so you can sleep," he says, without thinking quite what that will mean and then she is tugging him towards the bed, stopping to slip her robe from her shoulders so he can see the lacy nightgown she had brought back from King's Landing, the one from her wedding night, and he swallows and feels his body heat.

"Come lay beside me," she says, patting the bed as she slips under the furs.

She watches him as he turns back to the door to lock it, as he strips off his jerkin and tunic, pushes down his breeches and kicks off his boots and walks closer; she bites her lip as he climbs into bed beside her.

He turns his head to blow out the candle but something makes him stop, as if it is the dark he fears and not his own hungers. They are lying beside one another again; her shoulder is pressing against his, her thigh against his thigh, and his hand is curling unbidden in the rucked-up hem of her shift, he feels the heat of her bare skin under his knuckles.

She blows out a breath and then turns her back to him, shifting towards him, tugging him by the arm so that she is tight against him, so that he surrounds her smaller form.

His hands tremble where they touch her, his blood is hot, his breath is trembling.

"Did you ever think of me?" she murmurs as he lets his nose stroke across her neck, as his lips brush gently at her nape. "I thought of you," she says, his hands clutching at her hips, "lying beside you each night, I dreamed of you. Jon-" she gasps as he mouths at her neck now, as his hips rock against hers.

"Aye, I thought of you," he says, voice gravelly.

"What did you think of?"

"I thought of kissing you," he says, "I thought of putting my hands on your bare waist, on your hips, on your teats. I thought of supping at your cunt."

" _Jon_ ," she says, with a shocked whine, her back bowing against him, her hips twitching.

Oh gods, and he will burn in the Seven Hells for this, but fuck any god who might stop him from having her, from kissing her, he thinks, as he tilts her head back and takes her mouth with his, tasting her nervous breath, licking past her lips and swallowing her moans.

"Gods, Jon," she murmurs, hands scrabbling at his shoulders as she twists her body towards him, as his own hands slide around her waist, feeling her skin warm through the silk, and tugs her towards him.

He's hard, she can feel him pressing against her belly, can feel the firm span of his chest against her breasts and his fingers digging into her hips as he drags his mouth down her neck, as she pants. "Jon-" she gasps, insensible, begging for him to touch her even though he already is, "please–"

"I've got you," he says, taking her mouth again, kissing her like he is ravenous for her, lifting her leg up over his waist so he can press against her _there_ where she is hot for him, where she is aching. One of his hands is clutching at her backside, the other is cupping a breast, squeezing it pleasurably, his thumb fumbling at her hard nipple.

"Take these off," she mutters, tugging at his smallclothes and he pulls back, eyes pitch-black, and shoves them down as she sits up and pulls her nightgown over her head, shivering as his eyes roam her nakedness, watching as he swallows.

"Come here," he says, and pulls her down onto her back, leaning over her and kissing her jaw, sliding down to mouth at her breasts, at her trembling stomach, pushing her thighs apart with his hands and then putting his mouth on her _cunt_ just as he said he would.

"Oh _gods_ ," she wails, as he kisses her there like he is kissing her mouth, as he brings her to some wondrous peak of pleasure and leaves her writhing on the bed, nails raking through his hair.

"You taste better than I had dreamed," he murmurs, smile so very wicked when she opens her eyes to look down upon him, and then he is crawling up over her and she is widening her hips for him, pulling him towards her.

"You're sure," he says, as he sets himself at her cunt.

"Yes," she nods wildly, "please, Jon, I want you to. Please, husband," she says and he groans like he has been wounded, and thrusts into her, biting his lips on grunts that inflame her blood.

"None may tear us asunder now," she whispers, feeling him thick inside of her, feeling the way her body moulds to his, and he moans wildly as his hips work, as she lifts herself to meet his movements. "No man or god."

"Sansa," he says and kisses her.

"Swear it," she demands as he bucks into her, as his body presses heavy over hers, as he threads his fingers with hers.

"I swear it, my love," he says and she whines and gasps, head tipping back as his teeth drag across her neck, as his hips work and she twines her legs around him.

She peaks before he does, crying out, and he groans and thrusts faster, harder, clutching her tightly to him as he spills inside of her.

Some time later, they shift apart, but she can tell he is loathe to separate from her, to let her go, and so he keeps her close, his hands roaming her body, and presses lazy kisses to each patch of skin, his beard making her tickle and laugh as the roar of the feast in the hall drifts through her window.

He takes her again, a few hours before dawn, when the world outside their room is so quiet that she has to muffle her mouth against his arm braced by her head lest someone hear her cries, that he has to bite back his own groans, and it is terrible of her but there is something about the secrecy of it, the wickedness, that has her peaking within moments, and by the words that Jon whispers into her ear as he thrusts into her, he is of the same mind. _I want them to know that you're mine_ , he grunts, _I want them to see the marks on your skin and know that I put them there, I want_ , he gasps, _for them to know that I've had you, that I've spilled inside of you, Sansa—_

 

*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up in the last chapter: more drama, and the curious arrival of a southron Prince...
> 
> Also, the scene where Robb attacks Jon was partly inspired by a similar scene in vixleonard's amazing canon au [Build a Ladder to the Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/985794) (which you should all go and read if you haven't already) where Robb discovers Jon and Sansa together once they have escaped from King's Landing.


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

Ghost has returned from his time in the wolfswood and, though it is clear that those at Winterfell are uncomfortable with his presence, his coat blinding white against the grey and black stone as he plays with the other wolves and lingers in the corridor outside Sansa's rooms, Sansa herself is pleased to have him by her side, to have him sleep next to her on those lonely nights when Jon cannot slip through her door.

She misses Lady with an ache that is soothed by Ghost's willingness to sit on his haunches and let her braid ribbons around his neck and comb out his fur, his tail thwapping happily on the ground. He is a good listener too, as she babbles to him about all the things she cannot speak to anyone else about, namely, his master, whose name makes his ears prick up.

She had tried to encourage the wolf to go to Jon, thinking that he surely needed more comfort than her but when she told Jon this, on another feast night when they had met in her rooms – and after he had taken her twice and she lay in bed panting and well-loved, groaning as she stretched her muscles and her husband watched her hotly – he said that he preferred it so, that it pleased him to think of Ghost by her side, even if, he murmured, leaning over her to press kisses down her chest, he was jealous that she shared her bed with another, and then Jon set his mouth to her cunt and all thoughts melted away into the bliss of pleasure.

She feels drunk with it, with her love for her husband, with the way Jon makes her feel, with those glorious few hours they may snatch away from the world, alone together in a room once more.

Her mother is suspicious of her moods - of how she looks forward to each feast, humming as her maid braids her hair, as she bathes herself in oils, and then refusing to dance with any of the eligible men presented to her, and hurrying away as soon as she can so that she might beat Jon to her door – and of how she fades, grows sullen and sorrowful in the time between feasts, drifting around the keep like a wraith.

Yet Sansa would live this way for countless years rather than have Jon be banished to the Wall and be separated from him forever. She would die if that happened, she thinks, her heart would break in her chest and she would go to bed and never wake again, she is sure of it.

And yet Jon cannot remain as a prisoner in his own home, he cannot be leashed like a dog forever, and, more and more, she slips into rooms whose occupants - Catelyn, Robb and their advisers – grow silent and glance at her, shifting papers out of her view, changing the subject; more and more does she hear her mother and brother argue behind closed doors; and more and more young men arrive to try to tempt her.

Not even the news that Arya has been found well in Braavos and will set sail soon for home helps to distract her from her worry, though she wept with happy tears for hours when they received the raven, clutched her mother tightly as Catelyn keened, before her mother thought to use the news to mention how confused, how distressed, Arya would be to return and find her brother and sister wed.

Only Jon distracts her from thoughts of the future, only the hours they spend together feel like she is truly living, truly alive.

 

*

 

He cannot stay away from her, not now he knows how she feels in his arms, now he knows the taste of her, how sweet she is when they lay together, how he can drag such sounds from her that threaten to unman him completely.

On feast days, he hears her singing happily as she walks the grounds of the keep, careful not to come to close to his cell to give themselves away, and when the night falls and the merriment in the hall begins, when his guard leaves his post, Jon hurries to her, stopping at the door to the royal quarters to nudge a disgruntled Ghost away, for a man may slip through the shadows of a keep but not when he is accompanied by a white wolf, no matter now much his wolf wishes to spend all his time with Sansa too.

Sometimes, they hear voices in the hall outside her room, sometimes he hides underneath her bed with his heart-racing and waits for a knock on her door; sometimes he is almost caught returning to his cell, racing and ducking around corners, closing his door mere moments before his sozzled guard returns.

Jon is drunk with her, with lust and love, and he knows this is stupid, knows that they will be discovered one day, but he cannot stop, he cannot be parted from her.

"We might make a babe, Jon," she murmurs one night, her hair tangled up on the pillow, the sheets rucked around her legs.

Her lips are swollen from his kisses and the imprint of his bite is pink on her breast. Someone will notice the marks on her, he is getting reckless, but maybe some dark part of him wants them to, wants everyone to know that she is his – not least Catelyn, whose hatred he scorns, who schemes with Robb to bring pretty youths before Sansa to tempt her to choosing a husband. She already has a husband, Jon thinks furiously, every time he hears the hooves or wagon wheels that herald new arrivals to the keep.

"You want that?" he says, feeling his cheeks grow hot, hearing the gravel in his voice. He spreads his fingers across her belly.

"I do," she says, nodding, "yes, I want your babe."

"Sansa," he groans, and rests his forehead on her stomach, feels the tremble of her heartbeat underneath.

"Maybe if we have a child they will be forced to accept our marriage."

He shakes his head against her. "Or they will send me to the Wall, Robb will cut off my head."

She strokes a hand through his hair. "Sometimes I wish we never came back, isn't that a horrible thought, aren't I horrible, Jon."

"Sometimes I wish the same," he confesses, holding himself on his hands above her.

Don't tell me this is like one of your songs, he thinks, don't tell me of the tragedy to come, let us pretend for just a little longer.

 

 

The newest arrival to Winterfell, who has the castle whipped into a frenzy of curiosity, of cautious excitement, is not a youth, or a northerner, but a southron prince.

Jon saw him arrive from his window, wearing colourful silks underneath his furs, golden bracelets, and astride the finest horse anyone has ever seen this far north. He saw as the Starks were lined up once more and how the prince had paused to say something charming to Sansa that made her look bashful and pleased.

Prince Oberyn's retinue is so small as to be non-existent - a knight, two servants and two guards - and it is not a diplomatic visit but one of adventure, Jon's guard informs him when he asks, as he simmers with a sullen anger. He is to visit the Wall, the guard tells him, and yet Jon is not so foolish to think that is his only aim in breaking his journey at Winterfell, and neither are the other occupants of the keep. He is here, the servants gossip outside Jon's door, to woo a northern princess for his bride.

Catelyn must be desperate indeed to think of a Dornishman, a man with eight bastard daughters and a paramour, as a suitable match for her daughter, Jon thinks darkly, straining to look out of the window and catch sight of this prince who seems to delight all he meets, who swiftly starts teaching Rickon how to fight with a spear, and whose footsteps are followed by gawping maids and blushing wives.

He has never hated his imprisonment more than this, more than sitting here a useless lump in his cell while Sansa is no-doubt wooed by a prince who can gift her glittering jewels and silks, who can give her a life she deserves. It is not that Jon doubts her love, her fidelity, it is more that he sees himself for what he is, sees his situation, and knows that she would do better to wed a man like Oberyn, that Jon's love is not only wrong, but selfish, that if it traps Sansa here living a half-life, spending her days wishing to be imprisoned with him again in a room, then it is a poor love indeed.

Jon owns nothing - no jewels, no silks, no house, no keep, no lands – he earns no money, has no skill beyond that with a sword arm that no doubt grows weak no matter how much he trains emptyhanded inside his small room, no matter how he uses those hours when he is taken out to the yard in the dead of night and allowed to pace the field surrounded by guards.

He would not blame his wife if she left him for another. It would break his heart, but he would not blame her, would not hate her. He might be a jealous, foolish man; with a sullen temper and a blood-red jealousy that makes him grind his teeth to pain; but he wishes above all that she be happy, that she be loved and cared for.

He only begs the gods that he might be the man to do that - to love her, to care for her, to make her happy.

But the gods have never listened to him so he does not know why he bothers to entreat them.

 

*

 

Were she in a better mood, it might amuse Sansa to see her mother twist her morals such that Prince Oberyn has now become the perfect prize for her eldest daughter - a man twice her age, with a passel of bastard daughters and a paramour and lovers of, tis rumoured, both sexes, and a colourful past, a reputation as a fearsome warrior who has spent time with the barbarians in the East – but, since Sansa is not brought to much mirth these days, it does not make her smile.

Instead it makes her feel sad, that her mother is so desperate to do what she can to help her, to undo the hurt Catelyn thinks was done to her when she left with her father for King's Landing.

She might be the same as a mother, Sansa thinks, but she is not a mother. Not yet, she whispers, trying not to think of such matters, of the moon and of unblemished bedsheets.

Had she not already given her heart to another, it is true that she might have been tempted by Oberyn. He is handsome, generous, witty and kind. She has seen him stoop to help a servant unbalanced by her load, has watched him push Bran around for hours in the yard without complaining. She has listened to his wondrous tales of his travels and his colourful descriptions of his home, and has watched as his face grows tender when he speaks of his daughters.

He has been attentive to her, but not so much that it might be said that he is wooing her, and he has always been courteous to her, never leered and yet never treated her as a sexless creature either, he flirts and he teases. But it does not bring a spark to her belly, a true blush to her cheeks, that a simple touch from Jon might, that a single thought of her husband does.

"Are you acclimatised yet to the cold, my prince?" she says to Oberyn the morning before a feast that she anticipates with a different kind of hunger, as they walk the edges of the godswood.

"I am, my lady, even though I fear my nose may be forever red."

She laughs at his exaggerated frown, at how he twitches his nose. "You must miss the south, and your home," she says.

Oberyn has told them that he wishes to journey to the Wall, to see the far north with his own eyes, and yet he tarries here. Everyone else is quite sure they know the reason for his delay but Sansa is not so sure. She is a good judge of people, she thinks, after surviving her years in King's Landing, and there is something sorrowful about him, this glittering prince, something hiding underneath his easy charm.

"I do," he says with a soft nod.

"Then you shall be pleased to return south after you have visited the Wall."

He sighs gently. "I should." His eyes glance to hers.

"Forgive me for speaking so plain, my prince—"

"I have asked you to call me Oberyn,"

"Oberyn," she says with a smile as he smirks, the orange of his silk scarf bright against the grey day. "But is there some reason you tarry in your return, some reason you stray so far from home?"

"I am adventuring," he declares, "just as I did when I was young. I have wished to see the Wall all my life, to stand at its peak and look across the snowy wastes of the north." His head tilts. "But perhaps there is a reason for my trip beyond that desire. Perhaps I wished to meet a beautiful princess, to spend some time getting to know her lands."

"You flatter me, my lord, but I do not think that you journeyed all this way for my company."

"You do not?" he teases, eyes glinting. "Then you have surely not seen your reflection, my lady, nor heard your voice when you sing, nor do you know how beloved you are by all who know you."

She feels the shadow pass across her face, and knows that he sees it, the sorrow that comes with talk of love.

"We have the world before us, we two, we have riches beyond compare, and yet there is sorrow there underneath our smiles," he muses and then looks away to the distance. "I left my home for revenge, to seek a man, a monster, who had hurt my sister, to kill him as he killed her, without restraint."

"Did you accomplish your aim?" she asks, heart beating at the fierce look in his eyes.

"I did, but I almost lost my life in the attempt, almost brought war to my doorstep. My paramour, Ellaria—" and the way he says her name, the way his mouth shapes it, makes Sansa want to sigh like she is listening to a song and not the true story of a man "—she argued against my going, she raged at me, she told me I was reckless, that I was a father and should not throw away my life thus, that she would never forgive me if I left, never share my bed again." His head tips back. "The thought of revenge kept me living, Sansa, when I thought I might die for sorrow at the loss of my sister and her children, it kept a fire burning in my belly. Revenge warmed me for years before I first met Ellaria, it was, in some horrible way, my first, jealous, lover."

"Did it bring you peace?"

"No, and yes," he says. "I would do it again, would do it a hundred times over, but it has not eased the grief I feel, grief twicefold for losing my love."

"So you exile yourself," she says.

"Yes."

"You do not think to fight for her love?" she asks boldly, feeling her breath hitch with some flavour of mournful anger.

His eyes narrow, his body stills. Oberyn is a dangerous man, she knows that now more than ever, but she also knows he would never threaten her.

"You flee from her instead of begging her forgiveness?" she continues.

"If you knew Ellaria—" he says, voice soft.

"I know she must have loved you to bear you four daughters, and I can tell how much you love her."

He huffs, rubs a hand down his face. "You think I am a coward, you are a brave woman to say this to me," he says wryly. "I have very rarely been accused of cowardice and the man who would dare usually finds my spear in his heart."

She draws her shoulders back. "You do not frighten me," she says.

"That is well, for I would never wish to. You are brave, my lady. I have heard some of what you faced in King's Landing, by the hands of that craven boyking who I would have killed myself had I the chance. I'm sorry you to suffer what you did."

"I suffered little," she says, shaking her head, "it was Jon who bore the worst."

Oberyn nods and studies her carefully. "They say you are frozen because of what you suffered, that you wait for some lucky suitor to melt your heart, but that is not true, is it. You are heartsick, you love him."

"I do," she says in a small voice.

"By rights I should find it loathsome," he reasons, "a sister and a brother. By rights, I should blame him for stealing your heart and your maidenhead."

"I gave it to him, my heart," she says, feeling her eyes prick with tears, "and I shall give it to no other."

"I might say that you are young yet, my lady," Oberyn says softly, tipping her face up by her chin, "but a week in King's Landing may last a year, may it not."

She nods tearfully and he takes his hand back and folds them before him. She has not been able to talk of her time in the Red Keep with her family, because they do not wish to hear it, and nor with any maid, she has only Jon to speak to and when they are together she would rather they speak of happier things. That must be the reason for how charged this conversation with the prince is, that, and the way he holds his emotions close to the surface just like Jon.

"Your mother shall be sad that I do not make an offer," he muses.

"You were never going to," she replies and he huffs a laugh.

"And this husband of yours, this brother," he says, face growing serious as he sets his hands on her shoulders. "He is good to you?"

"The very best."

"Kind? Courteous? Loving?"

She nods.

"He would protect you with his life?"

"He already has."

"And yet he leaves you thus," his eyes glide to her middle, he raises his eyebrows. "Does he have a plan, this husband of yours?"

"We have no plan, no desire except that we shall be together."

He sighs. "Spoken like two in love." He turns from her then and walks a few steps away. "Is he rash? Prideful? If you chose to leave him, to want a better life than fleeing like outlaws, would he let you?"

"Yes," she says and knows it. "He loves me, he wishes to never be parted from me, but he wants my happiness above all."

"Truly?" he asks. There is a weight to his words that she does not understand.

"He swore to protect me, he would protect me from himself if he had to."

"Good," the prince says drawing closer again, "good. I should like to meet this man who has stolen your heart before I had the chance to make my advances."

He smirks rogueishly and she laughs. "And once you have satisfied your curiosity about him, and about the Wall, you should go home," she presses.

"I should, should I," he says haughtily but with softened eyes.

"You should," she says.

"And I shall beg for her forgiveness so fiercely, offer her so many gifts, so much penance, that they shall sing songs of it, that they shall marvel to see such a man humbled before his lady."

"Just so," she says.

"Thank you for your counsel, my lady," he says, kissing the back of her hand and bowing deeply, and when he strides away she feels a flutter in her chest, a rueful mirth. Thank the gods that Oberyn did not visit Winterfell when she was but a child, she thinks, for she would have wept oceans of tears upon his leaving.

But it will be her and Jon who will have to leave Winterfell next, she thinks, before the babe he gave her makes her belly too round, and she places a hand on her middle and breathes deeply as the wind whispers through the leaves above her.

 

*

 

At the feast that night, Sansa is late to her rooms, Jon has been pacing back and forth, his boots set aside so his footsteps make no sound, for almost half an hour when she appears, cheeks flushed with ale and brilliant smile.

"Am I late?" she asks after he has kissed her and as her arms splay around his neck.

He shakes his head. "Were you enjoying the feast?"

"Not without you there."

"Did you dance with him?" he asks foolishly.

"I did, one dance."

He swallows and studies her face - her pretty blue eyes and her pretty pink pout - is this to be their last night, he thinks sorrowfully, his heart aching, is she to leave with another man? Will this be the last time he has her in his arms?

He kisses her again, hands roaming her form as she presses tightly against him.

"You don't need to be jealous," she says, between kisses, as Jon's fingers fumble at her laces. "He does not seek my hand."

Jon shakes his head, burrows his mouth in her neck and then her breasts as he tugs down her gown.

"Jon," Sansa says, firmly, pulling at his hair.

"I don't want to speak of him, not here, not now," he begs and when he puts his mouth between her legs her words turn to gasps and moans and everything outside their room is rightly forgotten.

 

He leaves when Sansa falls into a doze, not wishing for them to say farewell, a coward yet, and hurries back to his cell.

But he is late and his guard catches him upon the threshold, looking drunkenly confused at his charge not being inside the supposedly locked door.

"I wanted to visit the training yard," Jon says brightly. "I was waiting for you."

"Oh. Alright," the young man - whose attempt to grow a beard is frankly pitiful - says, with his brow furrowed. "I shall gather the others."

And so, a few moments later, Jon finds himself in the yard, cold and disgruntled, with the murmur of the last hour of the feast echoing against the walls and the lights making the freshly fallen snow glint gold.

His guards are equally annoyed at being tugged out of their sozzled beds, their swords sheathed against their sides, muttering resentfully — at least, until another figure joins their group and they fall silent, as Jon turns and stands stock-still.

"It is late for a walk, my lord," Prince Oberyn says, approaching him.

"I might say the same, my prince," he replies, clenching a fist by his side.

Oberyn is not taller than him, not broader, but he is older, he carries himself with a confidence that Jon envies. He is handsome in person, aye, but so what, Jon thinks sullenly.

"I wanted to meet you," Oberyn says, studying him in the firelight, face hard.

"And I you," Jon says, feeling his blood heat, the last vestiges of cold leave him. This man, this prince, thinks to take Sansa for his wife, thinks to steal her from him.

"The men say you were a good swordsman when you trained here in your youth, that your skill set you apart from your brother, from boys your age. Is this true?"

"Aye."

"I am sorry then that you have not joined our sparring sessions. For I like to test myself," Oberyn says. His smile is dangerous. "Why don't we spar now?"

"Now? Aye," Jon says, gritting his teeth. He will knock the smile from his face, he thinks, he will gut this glittering prince.

"Good," Oberyn says. "A sword!" he calls to one of the guards who hands it over, looking dazzled. Oberyn throws it to Jon and draws his own, drops his furs in a heap behind him as they start to circle one another.

"I know what you're doing," Jon says bitterly, hefting his sword, testing the weight of live steel. "You seek to vanquish your rival. To do it cowardly, by night, as these guards look on and do nothing," he says and then rushes towards the prince, slashing down so that Oberyn must use two hands on his sword to block Jon's blow.

"You think I am without honour?" Oberyn says with a dark laugh. "I might poison you," he says as they thrust and parry, as their swords clash and their footsteps skitter on the snow. "I might slash your neck with a blade in the night, surely that would be the dishonourable thing to do. You think I fight you for her hand?" he asks, and groans as he blocks a blow, as he ducks Jon's blade. "Should she wed the winner of our duel?"

"No," Jon says bitterly, grunting as he kicks at Oberyn's knee, hissing as Oberyn's blade slices close to his ear. "It is her decision."

"I agree."

"But I would gut you if I could," Jon says, "I would kill you," he feels a sob caught in his throat. The impotence of his life now, the absence of any path forward, feels like a burning weight on his chest.

"So do it," Oberyn pants, as Jon knocks his sword away. The prince tilts his chin up, baring his neck.

"I cannot," Jon hisses, "I would not harm a guest in the keep of my liege lord, I would not harm you if you are the one Sansa has chosen." He holds the end of his sword towards the very spot that he taught Sansa to stab those last few days in the Red Keep, and heaves in quick breaths as the guards watch mute.

"You would let me walk away? From the fight? From Winterfell? You would let me take her?"

"She would not be taken. If she wishes to marry you then she shall. But if you hurt her," Jon sobs, his sword shaking now. "I will find you and I will cut you down."

"I will not hurt her," Oberyn says softly, batting away Jon's sword and standing up, groaning at the burn of his muscles. "Jon, I do not wish to marry Sansa, and I have told her thus."

Jon shakes his head.

"I swear it on the life of my daughters," Oberyn says solemnly. "And I am sorry for making you believe thus. I had to be certain, you see, that you were not like your father."

"What?" Jon asks, baffled, body aching. The nightfires make the scene in front of him glow strangely, make it seem like tonight has lasted an age. There is something about Oberyn's manner that scares him far more than when he was flying at him with a sword.

"You are not who you thought you were, who any thought you were. Ned Stark lied. He was not your father."

He pauses as Jon gapes, as the cold of the night brings a shiver to his limbs.

"I have brought with me a signed confession from an elderly Dornishwoman who once served your mother, in the few moons before she passed. I carry with me another confession from Howland Reed whose keep I visited before arriving here. Both swear the same story. That Lyanna Stark bore a babe to Rhaegar Targaryen and that she bade her brother protect that babe with his life. That the babe - of dark eye and dark hair - was carried hence and brought back to Winterfell, that Ned hid him here amongst the snows."

"No," Jon says, shaking his head, feeling the sword fall from his grip.

"Yes, Jon," Oberyn says solemnly.

_Lyanna and Rhaegar and Ned—_

"I will share these confessions with your family tomorrow, I will tell them the truth," Oberyn declares. "And I must beg your forgiveness for my delay. I had thought to take your measure first," Oberyn says. "For it was your father's own folly that broke the Seven Kingdoms, that toppled a dynasty. I blame Rhaegar for what was done to my sister, for leaving her unprotected and for following the craven whims of his heart, for stealing a woman little more than a child and getting her with child, for abandoning her in that sorry tower where she lost her life."

Jon is crying now, at the strength of Oberyn's words, at the knowledge that has sunk to the very core of himself, that he _knows_ is true. He is not Ned Stark's son, he is not who he thought he was. He swipes at his eyes and coughs. "You heard about a brother who was said to have stolen his sister," he says, with a thick voice. "Perhaps I am only my father's son, after all," he says hollowly.

"I do not think so, though you bear a likeness to him that I cannot fathom others not noticing. The way you hold your sword is just the same, though you are better than he was, quicker."

Jon shakes his head. "This feels like a dream, like a nightmare," he says. "I will wake tomorrow and not believe it."

"Believe it," Oberyn says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

All the fury Jon felt against him has vanished. But should he feel thankful, pleased, that Oberyn has split his world in twain?

"She is not your sister, after all," Oberyn says, "And cousins may marry, may stay wed."

"But I thought she was," Jon says, voice breaking, smile mirthless. "And that makes me more of a Targaryen than anything else."

Oberyn opens his hands. "The gods move in strange ways."

"Aye," Jon says, with a bark of laughter.

"And should you seek to take the Iron Throne now, as is your right?" Oberyn questions.

"No," Jon snorts and then grows more serious. "I would die before I set foot in the Red Keep again. I want no part in schemes, in plotting. You have more right than I. It was Elia Rhaegar wed and not Lyanna."

"Some say he wed Lyanna, or meant to. That he would take two brides."

"I don't care," Jon says wearily. Tomorrow he will wake in a new world, with new pains to sort through, new sorrows, but for now, he feels as if his bones are made of lead, as if he might sleep for a week.

"You would be welcome in Dorne, you and your wife," Oberyn declares, picking up Jon's discarded sword. Two of the guards have fled - to their beds or to share the news, Jon cares not - and the two that remain are swaying on their feet.

"I'm not sure I trust you with my wife," Jon says, feeling a glow in his chest when he calls her thus. His wife, aye, and let none ever tear them asunder.

"Still, the offer is there," Oberyn says and then takes his leave as Jon tips his head back and stares at the sky - the same sky that he looked at but an hour ago and yet now the world beneath it, his world, has changed.

 

*

 

It is announced the next afternoon, in front of all who gather in the Great Hall, that Jon is the son of the Targaryen prince and the north's dearest daughter, and that Jon has taken the name of Stark through his marriage to Sansa, that they shall be gifted the stronghold of Highpoint, north of Winterfell, as their seat.

"We shall tell them that you are a Stark, by blood and marriage," Robb had said as they met that morning in his private solar. Catelyn had near fainted when she heard the news and Robb had been stunned to silence while Jon and Sansa had looked on, holding each other's hand tightly. "We won't give them a moment to think of it, to fear the reappearance of a Targaryen."

"You will whisk me away out of sight," Jon had offered, his voice careful.

"Aye," Robb had said.

Catelyn had been brought a chair and she clutched at its arms as she stared at Jon, like he was a ghost come to haunt her.

Jon had came to Sansa's rooms early that morning, woken her with a kiss to her cheek that turned into many kisses before she emerged from her dreamy doze to wonder why Jon had been allowed out of his cell, before he told her the news.

It did not feel a surprise to her, that he was not her brother but her cousin, it felt right, true.

"You see, Jon, it is fated, the gods meant this to be," she had said as he lay his head in her lap and she stroked a hand through his curls.

"You still wish to be my wife, even knowing who I am, what I am?" he asked mournfully.

She tsked, "Of course I do, I love you. And besides, did I not wish to wed a prince when I was young, did you not pretend to be Aegon when you were a child on the training yard?"

He shook his head. "I have not imagined it to be true - I know it is, but my mind cannot fathom it – I am only glad that this means we may not be parted from one another," he said, threading his fingers in hers, kissing the back of her hand.

"Never, my love," she had said, bending to kiss his forehead, wishing she could take away his frown, his sorrow.

When she returned to Winterfell she had thought that she would only leave if she was forced, that she would cry and beg to stay, but now she is thankful to be journeying elsewhere, to make a new home for her and Jon, and for their family.

"I have news of my own," she said, feeling a flush of nervousness, and she took his hand and placed it on her middle, on the small swell that was hidden by her skirts and heavy gowns.

"You do?" he asked, looking confused.

"I am with child," she said and she does not think she shall ever forget the look on his face, the wondrous awe, as he stared up at her. This is a gift she can give him, she thought, after everything he has given her. A family, an heir. "You cannot be surprised after how determined you were to get with me child," she said with a sly smile as he laughed and crawled up over her.

"Aye," he said and then rested a warm hand on her middle, as the door nudged open and Ghost appeared, panting happily.

"I think he was the first of any of us to know," Sansa said as the wolf jumped on the bed and Jon groaned disgruntedly at being knocked from his perch atop his wife, before rubbing at Ghost's belly.

"We should keep it a secret for now," Jon mused. "Perhaps one shock is enough for everyone. Apart from the maester, you should tell him. Are you well?" he asked quickly, sitting up as Ghost pricked his ears, the both of them alert now in a way that made Sansa want to laugh.

"I am well, I promise," she said.

"You must be careful, you mustn't strain yourself."

"I should remain abed all day, you mean? Have you carry me everywhere I wish to go?"

"Aye," he said with a soft smile and a gentle kiss to her cheek. "I would have you in my arms every hour, I would have you not lift a finger."

"You would braid my hair and wash me and dress me?" she said as Ghost jumped down from the bed and left the room.

"Aye," Jon repeated, smile hotter now, as he made them both quite late for their meeting with Robb.

 

*

 

Jon has walked around Winterfell all day in a daze, trying to rearrange his memories of his childhood, trying to say his goodbyes, for he and Sansa are to leave within the week.

No one knows how to treat him, whether to shun him or welcome him, and when he walks he feels the eyes of many studying him for hidden Targaryen traits. Should they think he has a dragon hidden in his pocket, he thinks hysterically, that his hair will suddenly turn silver?

Robb is watching the boys on the training yard and their eager showing off for their king. He glances at Jon and smiles hesitantly, painfully.

"Do you remember when we used to train, how vicious we could be?" Jon says.

"Aye," Robb says, his face clouding over.

I should not have brought up our shared childhood, Jon thinks, reminded him of how we were brothers.

"Father told you about your mother, about your father, before he died," Robb says suddenly, looking at the yard.

"No, he didn't," Jon replies with confusion.

"He told you," Robb says without turning to look at Jon, his teeth gritted, "you knew before you wed my sister, did you not?"

"Aye," Jon lies, picking up his intentions, "I did. I knew we were cousins."

Robb nods, but it is a hollow accord they have made, and Jon know he has lost a brother and a friend forever.

And yet, the joyous arrival of another family member that very afternoon helps soothe some of his sorrow.

It is Arya, thundering into the keep astride a horse, leaping down to embrace Robb, and Bran and Rickon, to be almost picked up by Catelyn who weeps at the return of her youngest daughter.

Sansa hugs her too, tight enough for Arya to complain, to swat her away softly, but Jon hangs back from the happy reunion, slips away to another part of the keep before running footsteps have him turning.

"Jon!" Arya calls out and she runs to him and he marvels at how she has grown, how she is no longer a child but a young woman, with a wild beauty all her own.

"You've been off adventuring," he says as he hugs her tightly.

"And you have married _Sansa_ ," she says, stepping back, her frown so confused, so baffled, that it makes him want to laugh.

"Does it disgust you?" he asks.

"Yes," she says, her face screwed up.

"Even though I am not your brother?"

She scoffs. "You are still my brother," she says, lifting her chin, eyes fierce.

He smiles and tweaks a lock of her hair then rests his hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry I could not protect you, that you were forced to flee from King's Landing. I cannot imagine what you have been through—"

She sets her hands on her hips. "You only saved Sansa by marrying her and if you had done that to me I would have gutted you in your sleep."

He laughs and she smiles to have made him laugh.

"And besides, I got to visit Braavos, to train with the water dancers, to meet all kinds of people and see so many things."

"So were we to spar you might beat me now? Is that what you mean?"

"Aye," she says, with a proud little smirk.

"You should visit us, Sansa and I, at Highpoint."

"I shall," she says, "anything to get away from mother's marriage schemes," she adds with a scoff but it is not the horrified scoff of a child, he thinks, studying her. Has she met someone on her travels, he wonders, has his little sister fallen in love? He will not question her for now, he shall leave her to Catelyn, he thinks mirthfully, for he cannot imagine that Arya might wish to wed someone suitable.

He spends the last few days with his younger brothers, who are only delighted to have him free of his cell, to have their brother again for a short time of wrestling and japing and running about Winterfell.

And he spends his nights with his wife, his ladylove, in her rooms, speaking of his parents, of his sorrow, and of his hopes for their life to come, listening to Sansa's plans for Highpoint, for their child, and thinking that he is a lucky sod to have been gifted such a future.

 

***

 

A year and several moons into their new life at Highpoint, husband and wife are resting in their rooms after a morning of riding out to the furthest farm of their lands, racing each other along the valley that brought them back to the high towers of their home and arriving soaked to the skin from the winter snows.

"This is not the life you had wished for," Jon says sullenly as he sits before the fire, flexing his cold toes before the flames. "You had wished for a southron keep, a warm sun, jewels and silks and tourneys and travelling singers."

"We might invite a singer here yet," Sansa teases. Every now and then he says the same thing, expresses the same guilt, and each time she soothes him, reminds him of everything she _does_ have, and how her foolish childhood dreams have changed.

"Sansa _—_ "

"You brood on things that mean nothing to me anymore. I want only happiness, love, a family, and you have given me all three. Living in the Red Keep, I wanted safety, and there are no wars outside our walls, no dangers within," she declares, holding his face in her hand, stroking her thumb across his cheek. He is so solemn, her husband, so dear to her. "Besides, I do have silks," she says, ducking her head to look at him underneath her lashes.

"Aye," he says, gripping her hips tightly, a sneer on his lips that is more put on than true, "silks another man buys for my wife."

"You like the way I look in them," she says, draping her arms around his neck.

"I do," he says with a sigh and a smile, nosing against her cheek, biting at her jaw and kissing down to her bare shoulders.

He grumbles each time a gift arrives from Oberyn – who is ever thankful for Sansa's counsel and for reuniting with his love Ellaria (though Sansa thinks he also sends these gifts to tease Jon, which makes her like him even more) – but he cannot wait for the sun to set and for Sansa to dress herself in the gauzy gowns and shifts, the smallclothes, and let him tug away her furs and feast on her.

"You have bewitched me," he says, when she straddles his lap, as he gazes up at her with dark, worshipful eyes. His hands smooth up her sides, pluck at the ribbons of her shift, stroke her breasts through the lace and silk, and then he mouths at her nipples, palming her backside and rocking her against his hardness. "Do you know that?"

"And you have stolen me," she says, gasping at the warmth of his hands, at the heat of him underneath her, the ache in her cunt.

"Aye," he says hotly, ripping aside the smallclothes so that he can work his fingers in the slick of her, so that he can lift her up and set her down on him, hard and hot inside of her, as she whines and wails loud enough, she fears, to be heard in every corner of the keep. "I stole you," he murmurs, "and you are mine. None may touch you or have you or feast upon you, you are mine own, trapped within these walls—"

"Jon," she gasps, overcome, her insides fluttering.

In the bright light of day, they have spoken hesitantly of these games, of the words they say when they are abed, the dreams they share with one another, and they know that is only a fantasy, but oh, she thinks, as he lifts her up and sets her down on their bed, as he cages her in with his arms, there is something so wicked and good about them, about pretending she is a maiden from a song and he her wicked prince.

"And if I should wish to," he grunts, "I should you take in the great hall on the head table," he says as she moans, as she arches her back and he thrusts into her, hard and hot above her, "or in the gardens, the glasshouses, the halls. And everyone will speak of it, of how you are mine."

"Of how wicked my husband is," she gasps.

"Yes," he says and she can feel his dark smile as he kisses her, feel the soft brush of his thumb against her wrist. He is always careful with her, her husband, his words might run away from him but his hands never do, and she has only ever felt safe in his arms. "And they would see the seed on our sheets, see the way your belly thickens with child," he grunts, "and know that I have spilled in you."

"Yes," she moans and writhes on the bed as he grinds his hips, as he brings her to another wailing peak.

Afterwards, when they have washed each other, giggling in the bath, and he has patiently braided her hair into a passable braid, a knock on the door brings a welcome sight.

"And how fares the little lordling?" Sansa asks, taking their son from the arms of the maid, humming as he yawns up at her, as she smooths down his curls.

"Well, my lady," she says, "but hungry."

"Aye, he is always hungry," Jon says, looking over Sansa's shoulder.

"Like his father," Sansa murmurs as the maid leaves the room and Jon huffs delightedly.

She had had to explain the first few weeks, why it brought tears to her eyes to see Jon hold his son, to see him carry him around the keep with such pride it made her chest ache. "Should you wish him never to leave your side?" Jon had asked with a penitent frown, "I do not have to hold him."

"No," she had said, resting a hand on his cheek, "they are happy tears, I promise."

"I have shed my own," Jon admitted. "I never thought to have a son, a son with the name of Stark."

"I think the next shall be a daughter," she says, as her son wriggles around and is set down on the ground for him to toddle towards Jon who holds his hands out to catch his determined firstborn.

"Aye?" Jon asks, smiling boyishly.

"Or another son," she says with a happy shrug. "We have many more chances to have a daughter."

"Many?" Jon says as he lifts his son with a groan and holds him above him, gurgling delightedly. "You would think to fill each and every room of this keep?"

"Yes," she says.

"As my lady wishes," Jon declares, kissing her cheek and then hoisting their boy under his arm, spinning him around the room so that the laughter of father and son makes a pretty music that has Sansa smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.

 

*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this fic, and commenting along the way, I really appreciate it!! <3 
> 
> I hope this was a satisfying conclusion, and that you didn't mind Oberyn stealing a bit of the limelight (also, if you enjoyed the Oberyn x Sansa x Jon vibes, you might also enjoy my fic [Dornish Customs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13642173/chapters/31329774)...)

**Author's Note:**

> please comment if you enjoyed this, I'd love to hear from you! :)
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset for this fic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/181838432877/it-is-joffreys-chosen-punishment-for-the-starks)


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